UNDETERMINED: A 1982 Northern Crime Novel

You arrive in Sainte-Ursule, a remote settlement in Canada’s far north, in December 1982. It is polar night. The cold bites through your clothes before you have crossed the airstrip. Beyond the town, beside an ice road, human remains have been found scattered across the snow. There is no head. There are no hands. Dr. Adrien Vaillancourt was supposed to spend three days here. Examine the remains. Complete the paperwork. Fly south. But something does not fit. So he stays. And the longer he stays, the stranger Sainte-Ursule becomes. Everyone is polite. Everyone is helpful. Everyone seems perfectly willing to answer his questions. Yet somehow, the answers begin to sound as though they have all been rehearsed. People smile. Doors open. Conversations remain friendly. But names lead to other names. Old memories surface and disappear. People who should have little in common seem connected by something no one wants to explain. And Vaillancourt begins to understand that the mystery is not simply what happened to the body in the snow. The town itself is the mystery. Because in Sainte-Ursule, the most dangerous thing may not be discovering who killed a man. It may be discovering why everyone else wants you to stop looking. If you like atmospheric mysteries, forensic investigation, buried secrets and crime stories in which an entire community may know more than the investigator, step into Sainte-Ursule. Just don’t assume the people smiling at you are telling you everything.