A pawn shop owner collides with history in this speculative noir thriller with a classic feel.
Ex-hockey star, Trevor “Bronx” Rousselle’s post-ice life consists of running his pawn shop, frequenting the local gentleman’s club where he has a flirty relationship with dancer S’High-Anne, and keeping to himself. But when a client, Heather, comes into the pawn shop with her brother, George, and a myriad of Inuit artifacts of seemingly high profit margin needing a way out of the country, Rousselle agrees to help in exchange for the artifacts.
It turns out, though, Heather and George are involved in something far more dangerous. Heather recently had to sneak George out of a mental hospital where he was being kept by mysterious figures who wanted to silence him because of the very artifacts Bronx now owns. After a confrontation with a gunman, Rousselle manages to get the siblings out of the country but soon finds out the plane he arranged for them crashed.
With the help of S’High-Anne, whose real name is Malina, and her grandmother, Rousselle is able to get the artifacts translated, learning of a mythology that he doesn’t quite understand but that hints at something life-changing. So life-changing, it seems, that some are willing to kill for it.
Then his shop is broken into. Malina’s grandmother is murdered, and Rousselle’s cop friend is killed, raising the stakes of what he once thought were innocuous pieces of paper talking of ancient stories. Setting out into the Greenland winterscape to find out if the mythology has merit to it after all, this speculative noir thriller takes a unique and frosty turn.
Bronx Rousselle is cut from the same cloth as many classic noir detective characters. He’s brash, isolated, and crass. He sexualizes many of the women he encounters and shoots first, asks questions later. But he also has a softness to him that gives him more depth than the stereotypical noir detective archetype. He makes friends with a wolf in the winter wilderness, naming him Driftwood, and sharing his limited food with the creature. He pays off Malina’s loans so she doesn’t have to work at the gentleman’s club anymore, without even the promise of a relationship between them. While he hides behind his brash bravado and sexual commentary, he has a real softness for the underdog, for doing what’s right, and for taking care of people even if it means putting himself in danger.
His relationship with Malina is sweet, built on a mutual respect despite how the pair met. While he’s prone to making sexual comments with her, it never feels like she’s anything less than a person to him. He pays off her loans, lets her move into his house, and does everything he can to keep her safe while he places himself in danger over and over again to do so. He does a lot of this without even having a committed relationship with her. It’s a sweet, slow-burning relationship that also adds to Rousselle’s complex character.
The prose is reminiscent of a noir-style novel, too. It’s sparse and to-the-point. But, like Rousselle, it has a depth and beauty to it. Even with the lean prose, there are many beautiful turns of phrase that add another layer to Rousselle’s personality since it’s from his point of view. He thinks about the world with a jaded, sharp viewpoint, but one that also sees the beauty in it. A viewpoint that also seeks, desperately, for humanity, for kindness, and for love.
The plot moves quickly, leading Rousselle from his pawn shop to gunman confrontations and to an isolated, barren land, tying World War II to a revolutionary renewable energy finding. While this could feel overcrowded, the lean prose and Rousselle’s point of view unfurl the story as he works it out himself, so it’s a gradual, realistic reveal of what’s really happening and why so many are so focused on these Inuit documents.
This unique speculative thriller takes readers from a local pawn shop into the far-off snow-covered wilderness where wolves and polar bears await. It has an added historical side of things, entwining Nazi history with Inuit mythology and Nicola Tesla’s scientific developments, combining into one intricate but straightforward thrill. For fans of detective novels with unconventional main characters, this one is for you.
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