Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik

First Line: Seeing the name "Wyatt Speeks" in my inbox hit me like a physical blow.

 

Val Chesterfield is an extremely talented linguist in the field of dead Nordic languages. She's so talented that, when Wyatt Speeks finds a young girl frozen in the ice, cuts her out, and thaws her back to life, he asks for Val's help because the girl speaks a language no one understands.

 

Although there are many reasons for Val not to go, she accepts the job on the remote island off the coast of Greenland because Walter Speeks is the researcher who was there when her beloved brother Andy walked out onto the ice in fifty degree below zero weather and committed suicide. Val refuses to believe that her brother committed suicide; she believes his death was by foul play.

 

Although Val is almost overwhelmed by the land, the weather, and the enigma that is Walter Speeks, the girl is special, and it doesn't take long for Val to form a special bond with her. But the girl is sick and might even be dying, and Val believes that the key to the girl's survival may lie in Walter's mysterious research.

 

~

 

Val is a complicated character. She not only is an expert on dead languages, but she relies on drugs and alcohol to remain on an even keel. She only feels comfortable in her apartment and most places on the campus where she teaches. She's always felt like two cents waiting on change due to her father's overweening preference for her climate scientist brother Andy. Yes indeed, this woman has issues with a capital I. But she loves her brother so much that she loads up on her meds and flies to Greenland in an attempt to find out what happened to him. 

What she finds is equal parts strange and magical. As research scientist Wyatt Speeks tells her, "Nobody normal comes here. This place is just natural selection for people who want to leap off the edge of the world." And no one at the station is really normal. The magical part of the experience is Sigrid, the girl who was thawed back to life. Although Sigrid has a will of her own and, for the most part, refuses to cooperate, it soon becomes apparent that she knows more than she's letting on. Watching the interplay between these people is almost like reading a locked-room mystery.

There is so much to like about Girl in Ice. The scenes focusing on linguistics are stellar, and I loved learning why the Vikings named Iceland and Greenland the way they did. There's also a wonderful scene involving narwhals. But. Normally I have no problem willingly suspending my disbelief while reading a book. Something has to throw me back out of the pages. In Girl in Ice, two of the characters were almost too good to be true while another two were on the opposite end of the spectrum. And then there was the explanation for Sigrid's being able to be thawed out. How in the world did her people come across that little trick?

So while Girl in Ice has many good parts to it, it also raised some questions. Give it a read and see what you think.

Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik

eISBN: 9781982143046

Scout Press © 2022

eBook, 304 pages

 

Standalone Thriller

Rating: C+

Source: Net Galley

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.

The Greenland Breach by Bernard Besson

First Line: Lars Jensen felt the ground tremble beneath the snow.

The Arctic ice caps are breaking up, and the wealth that is being uncovered in Greenland has countries all around the globe scrambling for their share. Former French intelligence officer John Spencer Larivière and his two partners in the company known as Fermatown-- karate-trained Eurasian Victoire and computer genius Luc-- are given a freelance assignment that quickly leads them to Greenland, where people will kill for knowledge that could ultimately change the future of humanity.

I have to admit that the main reason why I chose to read this book is that I'm quite the armchair traveler, and I had yet to read a book set in Greenland. I also like to read thrillers with environmental elements to them. Unfortunately, once I'd finished reading The Greenland Breach, I felt the synopsis was the best part of the book.

The two strong elements in the book were its depiction of Greenland and two of the main characters. With the melting of the ice caps, Greenland is seen as a land that's literally coming apart at the seams, and this definitely ratchets up the adrenaline and the suspense. Besson has also created some fascinating characters-- especially Victoire, who has a scene in which she has to escape a killer that's one of the very best in the entire book. The second character that really caught my imagination was Le Guévenec, the ship's captain in Greenland responsible for those all-important ice samples that were to prove so much.

Where the book fell apart for me was in the plot itself. The samples taken from deep within the earth in Greenland that were so important that everyone was willing to kill for them were like carrots to lure the readers into turning the pages. I never did learn what sort of information they held. The story was very slow-moving at first, and when it began to pick up steam, it unraveled into so many confusing fragments that I had a difficult time keeping them straight.

The three partners in Fermatown placed so much confidence in their high tech gadgets that I had to laugh. I'm no computer whiz, but even I could tell they were using too many things that were easily traceable. Larivière was the focus for the majority of the violence in the book, including a truly horrible scene where he is detained in an airport in Greenland. The third member of the Fermatown team, Luc, was supposed to be a computer genius, but he spent much of his time adding unnecessary sex scenes to the book.

Even though I liked the book's setting and two of its characters, it was just not enough. The Greenland Breach was most definitely not my cup of tea.

The Greenland Breach by Bernard Besson

Translated from the French by Julie Rose

ISBN: 9781939474940

Le French Book © 2013

eBook, 355 pages

Thriller

Rating: D+

Source: Purchased as an eBook from Amazon.