Northward

Francis McNally is back.

The PI we met in Dark Time, the one who promised results in an earlier missing persons case but failed to deliver--and who has been beating himself up ever since, is getting a chance at redemption. Another missing person, but whereas in the earlier case he was reluctant to go against his own ingrained policies and protocols, all bets are off this time, not the least of which is the venue: to solve this case McNally will have to travel north--to Nunavut--to the edge of the Arctic Circle in Canada.

And this time around there are complications. Ten-years older and semi-retired, McNally is not quite so confident in his own skills. Though mentally as sharp as ever, the physical impediments of age are beginning to prevail. And his wife, Linnie has been battling a cancer that seems destined to take her life. But even she knows that her husband won't achieve any contentment, nor will she achieve any, until he's balanced the scales. When he hesitates because of her condition, she ridicules his concern: "You can pass on this chance at atonement," she says, "and use me as an excuse. I don't mind."

She assures him she will be fine--it's only a week--and McNally leaves for Nunavut, arriving in Baker Lake a short time later. The little hamlet has changed in the decade since he refused to travel there. It has become a company town, managed though not completely controlled, by a gold-mining outfit called Autumn, seventy miles to the north. The standard of living has risen--people are working--but there's an undercurrent of unrest too. Among the Inuit who still feel a strong attraction to their mythology, Autumn presents a threat: even the workers who travel there for their week-long assignments feel ambivalent.

For McNally this is window dressing: a missing persons case is just that. But as he gets deeper into the weeds, he begins to understand that the power of the Inuit mythology is more than the occasional drawing or essay or tale told by an old-timer. When McNally realizes that fact, he will have choices to make--choices that will decide the future of Baker Lake and of Nunavut...and even choices that will dictate how he lives the rest of his life