About the Book
A stranded detective tries to solve a murder in a tiny Alaskan town where everyone lives in a single high-rise building, in this gripping debut by an Academy Award–nominated screenwriter.
When a local teenager discovers a severed hand and foot washed up on the shore of the small town of Point Mettier, Alaska, Cara Kennedy is on the case. A detective from Anchorage, she has her own motives for investigating the possible murder in this isolated place, which can be accessed only by a tunnel.
After a blizzard causes the tunnel to close indefinitely, Cara is stuck among the odd and suspicious residents of the town—all 205 of whom live in the same high-rise building and are as icy as the weather. Cara teams up with Point Mettier police officer Joe Barkowski, but before long the investigation is upended by fearsome gang members from a nearby native village.
Haunted by her past, Cara soon discovers that everyone in this town has something to hide. Will she be able to unravel their secrets before she unravels?
My Review
I don’t always say yes to darker thrillers, but sometimes I like to break up the chick lit and rom coms with something completely different. The Alaskan setting stuck out to me, and seeing this described as a claustrophobic thriller had me intrigued. Everyone in the tiny town of Point Mettier, Alaska lives in one single high-rise building. If that wasn’t head-scratching enough on its own, a severed hand and foot are washed upon shore, and now a murder investigation featuring an out-of-place detective from Anchorage is taking place. Cara Kennedy, led by personal motives of her own family disappearing one day, heads to Point Mettier to see if there is any possible leads on their disappearance – but gets stuck there when a blizzard closes the only way out of the town. Getting to know the residents – all 205 of them living in one building – proves to only raise her suspicions about who was murdered – and who did it. Featuring an eclectic cast, this novel reads like a movie, with small town secrets, cover-ups, and scandal at every turn.
From the get, readers are drawn into the dark and frozen world of Point Mettier, the hallways of the single high rise that have seen and heard it all, the younger characters that are just trying to make it through school and get out of town. There really isn’t a time while reading that I felt relaxed, always ready for something else to be uncovered or another plot twist that would startle me. There was just one loose end that I didn’t feel was tied up at the close of the book, but the last few twists really had me raising my eyebrows. While this one was a little more gruesome than I prefer my novels to be, it was still a fascinating and twisted story that dark thriller enthusiasts will enjoy.
4 stars
