Why a Booktrail?
2000s: The snow can look so innocent and pure, but what’s underneath?
Strange Things Done
What you need to know before your trail
Dawson City, Yukon. Not the kind of place you’d want to visit really when it’s snowing as much as it is in this novel. Jo Silver is a journalist from Vancouver who has been sacked from her reporter’s job in Vancouver for withholding information about a serial killer. Starting work for the Dawson Daily, it’s not long before she finds things out about the new place she now calls home.
She investigates the rather dubious suicide of a local politician and soon realises that there is a lot more to this sleepy town than she first thought. What she doesn’t expect is for the police attention to become focused on her.
Travel Guide
Why does an author choose to set their novel in a small unusual place? Well, in the reader note, Elle explains that she first feel in love with Dawson City, the eccentric mining town stuck in the Victoria/Gold Rush era. She suggests closing your eyes and instead of imagining the tumbleweed drifting through town, it’s best to imagine the snow instead.
It’s known apparently as the city of second chances for who ever you are and from which ever side of the tracks you’re from.
But it’s the isolation which singles this place out – for real and certainly in the book. It’s as far North as you can imagine. The Top of the World, the dark underbelly of the Yukon where the big freeze cuts off all contact from the outside world.
In a town of around 60, 000 people, most leave before the big freeze arrives, but as Elle says – imagine if you stayed behind and something happened?
You’re on your own here…
Streetview Maps
A) Dawson City
C) Top of the World highway
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
This is a mystery in which the setting really is the place you wouldn’t want to go to for real. Well not at least when the big freeze comes into play. But for a literary journey, it’s the best. Remote, claustrophobic and down right creepy.
There’s a lot of scene setting especially at the start and whilst this can slow the action down a touch, I liked it because of the sense of unease and foreboding it gives to the story. This is not your average town where it snows bad, this is a way of life here and your life pretty much depends on getting out before the worst happens.
I always enjoy a mystery where the rookie journalist finds the scab and keeps picking at it until the truth comes out. The plot structure is linear and simple to match with the action and the investigation. Together with the white lines and icy roads of the town, this is a clear, good solid mystery.
Makes you a bit wary of small towns and rural communities in the Yukon however. That’s all I’m saying.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Strange Things Done
Author Guide: Elle Wild Destination: Dawson City, Yukon Departure Time: 2000s
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