Wednesday, July 29, 2020

The Boy With the Narwhal Tooth by Christoffer Petersen

First Line: It's a cliché, I know, but it really did start with a telephone, an empty desk and a generous new police commissioner, giving my career a gentle shove in the right direction.

When a young Greenlandic boy is reported missing almost twelve months to the day that he disappeared, newly trained Constable Petra Jensen travels to the north of Greenland to find him.

Petra Jensen is twenty-three and fresh out of the Academy. She speaks Danish, English, and German, but not Greenlandic. Showering after sparring at the gym, she applies "just enough scent to arouse interest from my single colleagues-- I graduated from a police academy, not a nunnery." Her training officer, a man she refers to as "Sergeant Jowls" is enjoying making her life miserable, and it's a tremendous relief when a sympathetic new commissioner arrives who allows her to show what she can do in finding this missing boy.

The mystery is pretty thin on the ground in The Boy With the Narwhal Tooth, but it introduces two interesting characters in Petra and the new commissioner, and it gives readers a real feel for Greenland, its people and culture. The descriptive phrases were excellent in giving a mental picture of the landscape as well.

I always enjoy reading mysteries set in little-known areas, so I'll be looking for more novellas in Petersen's Greenland Missing Persons series.


The Boy With the Narwhal Tooth by Christoffer Petersen
ASIN: B088C3PSG2
Aarluuk Press © 2020
eBook, 81 pages

Police Procedural/Novella, #1 Greenland Missing Persons mystery
Rating: B+
Source: Purchased from Amazon.

8 comments:

  1. Setting and characters! I like the sound of this new series.

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    1. I was very pleasantly surprised, and I'll definitely read more, Jenclair.

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  2. I'm almost always in the mood for virtual travel - adding it to my list!

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    1. Hope you enjoy it. You and I definitely share some reading DNA!

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  3. Sounds good. I just sent this review to a friend who has done archaelogical work in Greenland and loves the country. She will get it, so perhaps I can borrow it.
    Libraries still not accessibly to me.

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    1. I hope you will be able to borrow it, Kathy.

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  4. Loved William Shaw's book, as all of them.

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    1. I loved it, but there was a TSTL moment at the end that really chapped my hide.

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