Death in the Arctic by Tom Hindle was an ARC from Netgalley and the publishers. I thank them for the opportunity of revisiting Svalbard at an equinox, albeit a week before the autumn one not the week of the spring one, but it brought back happy memories, all the same. It’s due to be published this coming week.
Death in the Arctic
by Tom Hindle
A frozen wilderness.
A killer in the skies.
When aspiring travel writer Chloé Campbell is invited aboard a luxury airship flying to the North Pole, she thinks she’s bagged the opportunity of a lifetime.
But she hasn’t had long to admire the dazzling icy views before a fellow passenger is found dead in their cabin.
Trapped at the top of the world, the group agrees a tragic accident has occurred. But as the hours tick by, fear turns to doubt.
It seems everyone’s a suspect.
And it isn’t long before the passengers begin to turn on each other . . . (Goodreads)
My Review
The cover of Death in the Arctic gives you that fantastic 20s feel of dirigibles and Miss Marple. And so it should, since the author acknowledges his Christie influence, and a modern airship is the heart of the story.
We start with the sort of character listings that Christie would approve of. Most of the cast get a full blown physical description (I realise that I don’t find these at all helpful), which sadly is not matched by the depth of characterisation, except for Chloe, who gets to take the protagonist role eventually.
It takes a long time to get to the body. I have already considered abandoning the book at least twice by then, partly due to the lack of research on arctic daylight in September. I even turn to the reviews on Netgalley, which do at least encourage me to keep going. I’m not sure why anyone would describe it as a page-turner, though. Maybe I’m just too used to better crafted murder mysteries with sounder scientific bases. Mind you, I suppose getting the science into a right muddle is one way of parcelling a red herring, but it just made me cross.
If you like your locked room mysteries on the old-fashioned side, you’ll enjoy this one. I’m afraid Mr Hindle does not go onto my list of authors to follow, though he describes his settings well. I think it might make a better film, though.
Unusual setting – an airship in the Arctic. Too bad it didn’t live up to the expectations.
Too bad it wasn’t better done—it sounds like it could be a cool story. Though I just finished reading a longish locked room mystery short (from that Golden Age of mystery fiction) and it started to annoy me before it finished. It was literally a locked room, though—just not enough scope for imagination 🙂