Lead Review (A Winter Grave)
- Book: A Winter Grave
- Location: Kinlochleven, Scottish Highlands
- Author: Peter May
4.5*
The author has intense concern about climate change and he was motivated to bring to very colourful and frightening life (through his writing), the consequences of inaction. As an author he has created a thrilling storyline set in 2051, when the evidence of current apathy results in terrible consequences. The world is drowning and ice storms in Winter are the norm. He pens an apocalyptic and intense picture of how the world may well look only 30 odd years hence.
You may remember that Peter May penned a thriller titled Lockdown back in the early 2000s, about a terrible virus and the effects on populations. He couldn’t then find a publisher because his prescient (as it turned out) depiction seemed just too unlikely. Coronavirus arrived and publication of his book ensued. His narrative was starkly on point, as it turns out and perhaps this is once again a prescient and graphic depiction of the future.
The year is 2051. Cameron Brodie is a veteran Glasgow detective and he is struggling with a new medical diagnosis which will take its toll. He spots a work opportunity, that will serve a purpose for him, and which takes him up to Kinlochleven. The body of a man, George Younger as it turns out, has been found by a meteorologist. He is lying precariously embedded in the ice suspended over an ice tunnel and, thus, as she glances up, she sees the horrific image looming above her.
The incredibly inclement conditions mean the body is taken down to a local hotel on the shores of Loch Leven and is temporarily housed in the hotel’s cake cooler until the pathologist and Brodie manage to brave the swirling winds and snow and land in their eVTOL (which is a sort of automated helicopter). They settle into their hotel which has the feel of being in The Shining and when it becomes clear that someone seems to be indeed prowling around, keeping tabs on them, then the sense of spookiness grows.
Part of the novel looks back at the year 2023, which sets Brodie’s current issues in an almost contemporary context.
He invents all kinds of new devices that seem perfectly plausible for 2051. Anyone who watched The Capture on BBC will understand that Peter May has simply looked into the future and extrapolated the consequences of deep fake. I am glad to report that milky coffee and cheese sandwiches are still a thing 30 years hence. He does have his character in a down filled parka. Down will be long gone by 2051, I hope, given the cruelty of its harvesting.
The author has really gone to town, in a plausible way, about the effects of ignoring the warnings about climate all around us today… ignore it at your peril is what he is clearly saying. The sense of place is terrifically graphic as the characters negotiate their trip up to and through The Highlands in terrible weather conditions.
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