Cold

🥶🌨️❄️🍁🏒
Review of the McClelland & Stewart paperback edition (January 9, 2024).

This was a rather fun mix of thriller, mystery and horror with a very Canadian settings of isolated northern landscapes and the downtown hockey rinks & university locales of Toronto. It blends the indigenous mythology surrounding "a creature that shall not be named" with the world of amateur hockey leagues and the machinations of university professors who are overly friendly with their students to the detriment of their marriage.

It opens in a setting with a downed bush plane where the two survivors face a grim chance of survival. It then flashes forward where the journalist passenger of the air crash has written a book about the experience show more and is now on a cross-country book promotion tour which brings her to the University of Toronto for an appearance.

While in the city she meets a bedraggled professor of indigenous studies who is in the midst of a failing marriage. Also in town for a tournament is a weary amateur hockey player in the Indigenous Hockey League. This trio interact in various ways and gradually discover that there is some sort of horrific manifestation which is hunting down the people they know.

See photograph at https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/452800216_27094075030191259_2...
Authors Elizabeth Renzetti, Kate Hilton and Drew Hayden Taylor in discussion at the 2024 Lakefield Literary Festival. Image source: own photograph.

There was a great bait & switch twist towards the end and the finale was probably the most Canadian 🍁sort of thing that I will read this year 😊.

Trivia and Link
Somewhat like Shakespeare's "Scottish play" in the world of theatrical people, in indigenous culture it is considered unlucky to say the name of the monstrous creature aloud, especially in the summertime. But if you want to know more, you can look (Spoiler Warning) here.

At the 2024 Lakefield Literary Festival here in Canada 🍁 this past weekend, Drew Hayden Taylor confirmed that he is contracted by the publishers to do a sequel novel to Cold, which he has yet to write, but which he is starting soon. I don't know if it will be called Cold 2 or Colder or something else 🥶. show less

The story begins with a plane crash in Canada’s frigid northern wilderness before taking on a supernatural twist based on an indigenous myth. I really enjoyed this darkly funny novel, a mashup of murder mystery, adventure, but mostly horror.