There is much discussion of the kind and type of snow and ice, their depth and breadth. We are instructed on snowmobiles, power generators, satellite dishes, fire-burning stoves and cords of wood - all details of never-waning importance to the residents and of some consequence to the reader. This is not altogether a bad thing, especially not for a reader such as myself who has a fondness for cold climates and some acquaintance with the Great Lakes region.

And as the title implies, the Northern Canada winters are indeed an apt location for murder, what with the ever-present snow and ice to obliterate clues and otherwise hamper investigations. Belle Palmer finds this to be true when she is called on to investigate the death of her good friend Jim, a young man she had tutored when he was a schoolboy.

Belle is a middle-age real estate agent who lives alone with her dog Freya and her collection of classic film videos. Belle is extremely independent and self-reliant. She has modernized her lakeside home to where it is cozy and efficient, with triple-paned windows, a microwave oven, and a satellite dish.

She has a cadre of good friends of much the same temperament as hers, who though living some distance away, despite and because of the intemperate weather check up on and visit each other with regularity. Belle is snowmobiling with two of her friends when they come across the eerie sight of a hand, frozen, extending above the surface of the lake. The death is quickly ruled to be an accident; Jim must have been blinded by a sudden snowstorm and driven his snowmobile into the lake.

Jim’s fiancée Melanie won’t accept that conclusion and she enlists Belle’s help in uncovering the truth. Like Melanie and Jim’s family, Belle is reluctant to accept the possibility that Jim, who was such a careful, skillful man, could have died in a snowmobiling accident. And Belle recalls that in her last conversation with Jim he had mentioned seeing small planes landing late at night at remote spots and he suspected illegal drug trafficking.

Belle’s snooping makes someone nervous, because one night she arrives home to find her home violated and Freya unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. In her haste to deliver Freya to the vet, Belle traps her van in a snowdrift and is rescued by Franz, her wealthy neighbor from across the lake.

Working slowly but methodically, Belle pieces together her hodgepodge of clues and all she learns about the dark underside of Northern life to discover who murdered her friend Jim and why.

As mentioned earlier, the homicide is but a backdrop to the landscape and climate, so the mystery isn’t much of one. I did enjoy reading about life in that isolated region and how resourceful the natives are, but there is little suspense in this story. Belle is so stalwart an unflinching, I was never afraid for her - not even when her house was broken into and set afire. There are two suspects. One is obviously a bad person, the other is not so obvious. Experienced mystery readers will quickly decide who the guilty one is.

The writer uses many colloquialisms, which should either have been explained or written in a context where a reader unfamiliar with the terms could interpret the vernacular. Also, there is a problem transitioning from one scene to the next. For example, Belle is sitting in her kitchen and the next thing you know, she is atop a hill astride her snowmobile. These jumps happened so frequently, I often had to backtrack in my reading to make sure I hadn’t missed anything or that two pages hadn’t got stuck together.

--Lillian Jackson