This is the second novel from the author of the much-praised The Bees.
Set in the near future, the action alternates between Britain and Arctic Norway as “very modern buccaneer” Sean Cawson pursues commercial success in Europe’s far north, while haunted by the accidental (or was it?) death of his business partner, environmentally aware Tom Harding.
Among the clues that this is set a few years from now are the introduction of a top barrister as a “KC”, not “QC”, and the fact that most ice at the North Pole has melted, opening a trade route across the top of the world and raising the prospect of both the exploitation of natural resources and great-power territorial disputes (Putin’s Russia actually planted a flag on the Polar seabed in 2007).
This could have been preachy in a green sort of way. It isn’t. The excitement of Cawson (and others) is given a fair hearing: “Untold mineral wealth was unprotected and within reach. There was something magical in the air; it was a new golden age of trade and opportunity.”
And much of the action takes place in that under-used source of drama, the British coroner’s court.
