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This book has a misleading title. Someone at the publishing house decided calling it a "thriller" would get better sales for it. This is a shame, because it's really a drama. If you come expecting a John Sanford type novel set in a northern clime, you'll be dissapointed.

However, if you like a drama with a forbidding, beautiful setting, characters who decieve each other, and a slightly naive (though lovable) main character who feels remorse for his mistakes, you may enjoy this book.

My main gripe about the novel is that what should have been the "mystery" of this story was very easy to figure out. I felt a little angry that the protagonist, Daffyd, didn't see how this was going to play out. He accepts that a woman - whom he has no memory of ever sleeping with - bore twins for him. Suffice it to say that this is a plot that has been handled on daytime soaps many times (and let's face it, handled better). A trip to the Maury show could have cut this book in half.

Where this book does succeed is in the description of the location, a small town in Canada near the edge of the arctic. The characters (until the very end of the story) are imbued with a sort of hopelessness that comes with the atmosphere, a paralysis that keeps many of them stuck in the past. There is a dash of romance in this story as well, and these portions of the book were well written.

I stuck through the end of the book, because of the setting, and because I wanted to see Daffyd get some sense knocked into him. Unless you are looking for a slow paced drama, skip it.