In The Shadow Of The Glacier (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
I admit I like free shit. I also admit I’m not entirely rational in my thought process. For example, I happily hand over my Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime Conference fees and feel like I’ve won the lottery when I receive a bag filled with books. Seriously, this ends up being one of the major highlights of these conferences. So in my continued pursuit of this high, minus the conference fees, I have decided to scour Amazon for the best free short stories and books available. With that being said, let’s get to the review.If I didn’t pursue mysteries with such determined passion that I simply can’t imagine a world without them (despite an active imagination) and actually feel incomplete and unfulfilled whenever one doesn’t strike my fancy, I might have enjoyed IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLACIER more. Instead, I felt like I never came out of the shadows of this tale, the light nothing more than a distant memory. The void left in this story’s wake could rival the destruction of Greenland, and I have a feeling by the end of this review even I will probably have questioned my own objectivity. But all I can say is I’ll endeavor to do my best.To say I didn’t like Constable Molly Smith is probably an understatement, but I’ll handcuff myself from using stronger terms, and we’ll leave it at a strong dislike. I could write multiple paragraphs on her level of incompetence, but I can sum it up thusly: She reminded of Stephanie Plum. Only Smith was in a paid law enforcement position and wasn’t funny on purpose, entertaining the masses with her hijinks, and she certainly didn’t exhibit any promising police skills that I noticed. In short, if you’re a criminal and want a taste of the good life, then Trafalgar, BC is your new utopia, the Promised Land if you will. Look it up on a map and then you can swarm across the border in droves.The dialogue reminded me of a college dissertation. To say it’s stilted probably proves to be a severe underestimation. I’d find my body pulsing involuntarily, and sometimes spasm uncontrollably, at the way some of these conversations were executed. Dialogue should be a condensed version of how folks talk, without all the noise and filler, except when used in slight doses to create verbal tics. Needless to say, many of these discussions didn’t measure up.Maybe the text reads better in print, but the formatting errors on my Kindle were bad enough that I couldn’t overlook them. And their abundance interrupted the flow of the story for me. If I were Poisoned Pen Press, I’d ask for my money back.I could talk about the plot, but let’s just say Constable Smith spends more time on tangents and not working than she actually does solving crime and chasing down the bad guys. In other words, she’s the model government employee that the media loves to idealize, and she gives the rest of us a bad rep. She may be a new constable, but she could have displayed a modicum of competence.Which brings me to the ending. This might just be the worst ending I’ve ever read in my entire book reading existence. You can take your cliffhangers, your unresolved resolutions, and speed racer sprints to the finish line, and this book laughs at every last one of them. I’ll just put the whole shebang in spoiler tags and you can read at your own accord. If nothing else, it does provide a certain amount of entertainment, just not in a good way. (view spoiler)[ One of my biggest pet peeves, and I’ve stated this before in my reviews, is when the killer starts spouting off why he committed the crime. If the criminal is smart enough to elude the detective, constable, PI, amateur sleuth, what have you, he should be smart enough to keep his mouth shut, in the vast majority of cases. When he starts flapping at the gums without any real provocation, other than to give the reader and detective insights that could have been provided over the course of the story, that’s even worse.Constable Smith stumbles upon the solution to the crime while going out on a date with the killer, during which the truck breaks down, and she just happens to root around in the back of his pickup, and he doesn’t even bother to physically stop her. Heck, he doesn’t even really discourage her. So I just read 300 pages of a mystery novel, and now you’re going to tell me she’s not only incompetent but also extremely lucky and that the killer is a moron?It’s no secret that I’m not really much of a fan of SUVs. There are those SUV drivers out there that think their car is bulletproof, ice and snow proof, pothole and standing water proof, and maybe even tornado proof. So I had no problem with the vehicle of choice for the killer’s demise. But it’s way too convenient and seemed completely at random, and I felt like Vicki Delany stole the Infinite Improbability Drive and used it for her own devices. Fucking hell. (hide spoiler)]
After hearing some thumbs up comments about Delany's Smith Winters series I recommended it to a friend. Two years later the friend was back seeking the series name. By this time I didn't have a clue. With the help of the readers' advisory skills of fiction_l members I was able to put this series back into the hands of my friend. Thought it was time for me to actually read one. I decided to listen to the first in the series In the Shadow of the Glacier. Somewhere, somehow I got the impression that it was if not a cozy, not terribly graphic either. It started out that way but somewhere the tone was amped up. There is something about this and also the development of the main character, Molly (Moonlight) Smith that seems uneven to me. Initially I get the picture of an innocent, sweet-talking rookie cop, love child of hippie parents and before you know it she's dropping the f bomb ll over the place. This seemed out of character to me. It didn't help that I listened to this, finding the narration annoying too. I say this reluctantly as I realize it is not easy to narrate an audio book and I don't mean to insult this person's life work (Carrington McDuffie). In my opinion, the narrator's normal reading voice was excellent. It was when she got into character narration that I had the problem. Perhaps the change of voice or role play is needed to distinguish the characters but for me it did not work. Back to the story. What would make me read another in this series. Delany sets the series in the fictional town of Trafalgar, British Columbia, a small town with some major political and ecological issues. Trafalgar's just above Vancouver and is holding out to keep it's wilderness character. At the get-go, Molly on her rounds as cop trips over the body of Reginald Montgomery. Many suspects emerge as Montgomery has many enemies. Not only is he opposed to the building of a Commemorative Peace Garden to honor Vietnam War draft dodgers but he is also financing Grizzly Resort, that if allowed to be built will ensure no grizzlies roam here any longer. . These two charged topics are dividing the townspeople. This would be enough to keep the police busy but add a whole bunch of other seemingly unrelated crimes and Trafalgar could use more than Smith and her Sergeant, John Winters, a tough veteran cop relocated from Toronto to keep the peace. I loved all the other stuff going on in small town Canada. reminding me much of my own small town living. Everyone knows everything about everyone and it's hard to stay out of everyone's business or get away with anything. Delany does a good job of giving us background on her key characters even if I thought their development uneven. I liked Molly's mother, Lucky, a throw-back to her hippie days and Molly's dad, Andy, who is trying to live in the present as a respectable businessman, forgoing his hippie past and clashing with his wife but also fiercely protective of both Lucky and Molly. Did I mention there's a dog; Sylvester? Molly is struggling with many things, the death of her young husband, living at home where she is still treated as a child named Moonlight, not driving, being a female on the force and trying to be taken seriously by townspeople who have known her since she was a babe and of course, her new superior John Winters (he's married so for now no love interest there), who she wants to impress. Getting back to location. Though the town is fictional the area, the Kootenay Mountains and river is make a great backdrop for the story. Many draft dodgers and resisters flocked here during the Vietnam War and this part of the story rings true. In the end the book made me smile, kept my interest so I'll be back for more.
What do You think about In The Shadow Of The Glacier (2007)?
This could have been an interesting book, if only the characters weren't eye-rollingly irritating. For an ambitious cop Molly appears to have very little sense; her reluctant and grizzled partner constantly thinks about his adored wife, but only in the context that she's stunningly beautiful and no one else has a wife as hot as he does. I gave up after the first few chapters - a pity, since the actual murder and seething small town politics were interesting - because I just couldn't take any more.
—Helen
I am having a hard time deciding on my opinion of this book. I have read all of Vicki Delaney's Klondike series and for the most part found them enjoyable reads with some faults that I have discussed in my reviews of them and having read all the glowing reviews of the Molly Smith series I was anticipating the same satisfying reading. However I just didn't quite get that in this book. It's hard to like a book when one of the MCs comes across as unlikeable but it really takes a large stretch to like a book when both of the MCs are unlikeable and I sure didn't find much to like about Molly Smith or John Winters. Molly is just plainly too dumb, insubordinate and lost in the investigation and John is just too lost in the past and only interested in Eliza! I mean the storyline was OK if a bit prejudiced against the Americans and the conclusion was pretty obvious fairly early in the book even though it was unveiled by too many completely improbable happenings!I really wanted to include Vicki Delany up on my list of favourite Canadian Female authors including Louise Penny, Barbara Fradkin and Mary Jane Moffini but I don't think I can and perhaps I only liked the Klondike series because of the setting. I have acquired some more books in this series but they aren't listed as priority reads on my very long TBR list. I think I'll probably try a Vicki Delany standalone or whatever before any more of this series.
—Philip
I enjoyed the characters, though (and this is becoming a standard complaint with me) the villains felt one-dimensional and silly. I also felt like the solution to the crime was absurd - Delany seemed to just choose the least likely culprit she could think of and pin it on him without a satisfactory explanation.The setting was wonderful, though, and she did a lovely job of bringing us to the heart of BC. I'll read another book in this series simply because this was the first and maybe she just needs a bit of time to get her feet under her.
—Tina Siegel
