Jours de Glace - Maud Tabachnik

Maud Tabachnik chooses a place of extremes for her latest novel; the remote frozen tundra and small town life of Manitoba in Canada.  Major events however in Jours de glace (Days of Ice) shake up the small town of Woodfoll where Lou Gyrnspan is sheriff, events that have repercussions and reveal underlying prejudices in the characteristics of its inhabitants, characteristics however that Tabachnik isn't quite able to convincingly grasp and turn to the advantage of the thriller plot.

The temperature in Woodfoll rarely rises above -15° and conditions in the region seem to be worsening, making life difficult for its inhabitants and for the law authorities.  It's considered the perfect place however for a new experimental high-tech penitentiary built 25km outside the town that is going to treat 60 of North America's most dangerous criminals, with only 20 guards and a group of psychoanalysts.  Among the psychotics, schizophrenics, sociopaths, paedophiles and rapists with recidivist behaviour, the worst inmates are probably the Bernatchez brothers, a fearsome hillbilly family straight out of Deliverance.  What could possibly go wrong?

The authorities however have left nothing to chance, equipping the facility with ultra high-tech surveillance equipment and use advanced computer technology for security, as well as employing the latest psychoanalytical practices and theories. Lou however isn't convinced and there are concerns from local Native Americans that the penitentiary has been built on top of an ancient sacred burial site. And indeed a perfect storm hits and not just a hurricane but an exceptional solar flare knocks out the IT system and leaves the doors to the prison open. The four Bernatchez brothers escape leaving several prisoners dead having ripped their throats out with their teeth. To make life even more difficult, there's also a killer at large, his latest victim a young Native American girl.

Tabachnik takes on a lot here, and it doesn't entirely come together. There's no question that the crimes committed are credible - even if the impregnable high security prison break-out feels contrived - but there is too much overt reference to Fargo and Deliverance as if these are the academic reference points for criminal behaviour, and there's no effort to really delve into the mindset or behaviours that lead to some of the more shocking violence in the book. Tabachnik however captures well the sense of the vast dangerous wilderness of the inhospitable region, which does tie in well with the landscape of immeasurable violence and evil.

Elsewhere the contextual elements are rather weak. The author brings in the beliefs and traditions of Native Americans, Muslim immigrants and racist attitudes against them as a potential source of trouble, but she does tend to play to stereotypes and only seems to paint 'outsiders' as being incompatible with the modern world. Other than introducing an obligatory lesbian element, Lou's love life seems poorly developed and remains largely irrelevant to the wider story, although it does testify somewhat to the loneliness of living and aging in that part of the world. The scope and landscape is ambitious setting for a thriller, but unfortunately few of these elements come together in any way convincingly in Jours de glace.