THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES
By Stef Penney
Quercus. 450 pages. £7.99
ISBN 1 84724 067 4
‘Book of the year’ is quite an accolade, and for a first time novelist it is an award which will mean an ongoing contract, a place in the best seller charts and a display in Waterstone’s window. The recipe? Well, take a lot of snow, mix in a 19th-century fur-trading post, some pretty tough women and a sprinkling of Native Americans, then carefully stir in a murder. Stef Penney has taken some dramatic ingredients for her first novel The Tenderness of Wolves and formed an ambitiously complex mystery out of them.
The story is mainly narrated by Mrs Ross, who discovers the body of an eccentric neighbour and then realises that her adopted son is missing. With a Native American tracker, who happens also to be a murder suspect, she sets out into the wilderness, following her son’s trail. All around, other plot lines surface: two sisters disappeared years ago, a carved bone may be the evidence for a written native language, a husband is lost, a mad woman is seduced, people fall in love, a greedy corporation distorts justice. A book with so many threads and characters could easily feel overcrowded, but Penney skilfully weaves them into the narrative sideways on, as it were. They are stories told and retold by the characters, and most do not happen in the present time of the search for Francis Ross. Some act as red herrings, some as interesting sidelines, some give depth to character and setting. And, through it all, the hunt for the killer carries on, drawing the reader in.
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