ldquo;Sharp, introspective Systead is a strong series lead, and Carbo rolls out solid procedural details, pitting him against Department of the Interior bureaucrats. The grittiness of the poverty-wracked area surrounding Glacier plays against the park’s dangerous beauty in this dark foray into the wilderness subgenre. Put this one in the hands of those who enjoy Paul Doiron’s Mike Bowditch novels and Julia Keller’s Bell Elkins series.”

Autorentext

Christine Carbo is the author of The Wild Inside, Mortal Fall, and The Weight of Night. A Florida native, she and her family live in Whitefish, Montana. Find out more at ChristineCarbo.com.

Klappentext

"In a land sculpted by glaciers, the forest is on fire. Thick smoke chokes the mountain air and casts a twilight glow over the imposing mountains and vistas of Montana's Glacier National Park. When firefighters are called in to dig fuel line breaks near the small town bordering the park, a crewmember is shocked to unearth a shallow grave containing human remains. Park Police Officer Monty Harris is summoned to the site to conduct an excavation. But with a 2,500-degree incendiary monster threatening to barrel through the town and no forensic detective on hand, Monty must work outside protocol"--

Zusammenfassung
On most days, the wilderness gave me peace. But not tonight.

In a land sculpted by glaciers, the forest is on fire. Thick smoke chokes the mountain air and casts an apocalyptic glow over the imposing peaks and vistas of Montana’s Glacier National Park. When firefighters are called in to dig firebreaks near the small town bordering the park, a crew member is shocked to unearth a shallow grave containing human remains.

Park Police Officer Monty Harris is summoned to the site to conduct an excavation. But with an incendiary monster threatening to consume the town, Monty seeks help from Gretchen Larson, the county’s lead crime scene investigator.

While the two work frantically to determine the true identity of the victim, a teenager suddenly disappears from one of the campgrounds in Glacier. Could the cases somehow be connected? As chances for recovery of the missing boy grow slimmer and the FBI finds only dead ends, Gretchen and Monty desperately race to fit all the pieces together while battling time, the elements, and their own unresolved inner conflicts.

The Weight of Night is the latest novel in an award-winning series which “paints a moving picture of complex, flawed people fighting to make their way in a wilderness where little is black or white” (Publishers Weekly). It is a gripping tribute to the power of redemption set against one of America’s most majestic and unforgiving landscapes.

Leseprobe
The Weight of Night

Gretchen

I’D LOVE TO tell you the person I am now has nothing to do with the girl I was when I lived in Sandefjord, a quaint port town on the southern tip of Norway. I was born there, a place where the sun glinting on the navy-colored, foamy bay made you feel alive, and the crisp air gusting in from the North Sea ensured you never forgot your strong-blooded, Nordic roots. I lived a typical, healthy life with my family—skiing, sledding, skating—until everyone: my mother, my father, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, the neighbors, my classmates, my teachers . . . quit trusting me. I quit trusting me.

It had been exactly five years and two months since the last time I had gone through a phase of my dreaded sleepwalking habit, when I was twenty-five. I have had what professionals call a REM behavior disorder—a condition that takes sleepwalking to absurd levels—since I was a child. Unlike most people who frame each day with an awakening from sleep and a submission back into it, I learned that the bracket on the slumbering end of my frame was seriously flawed. After a busy or stressful day when most people relish the thought of snuggling into their beds, wrapped in warm covers, their heads sinking into soft pillows and sliding blissfully into a world of dreams where time ceases to exist, I fear going to sleep—sometimes dread it.

But I had begun to think I might be over my syndrome—that I’d succeeded in prying myself away from my younger self, that treacherous girl, like I was a toy comprised of two plastic parts held together only by stubborn glue. Unfortunately, I was wrong, and my disorder began rearing its ugly head again one warm summer morning in August. Later, my doctor would say it was the heat and the particlefilled air that acted as a trigger, but I came to see its resurfacing as much more fated—a deeper prompt forcing me to dredge up raw, unwelcome memories.

I woke up at my usual six a.m. alarm and noticed the light covers—a sheet and thin blanket—tangled and pushed to the bottom of the bed. I gave myself the benefit of the doubt. After all, it had been a hot night. All summer the temperature had hovered upward of ninety-five degrees and half the Northwest was on fire. Montana was no exception. Fires burned to the east, west, north, and south of the Flathead Valley, and the ones raging in and around Glacier National Park had started more than four weeks earlier. Now the thick smoke blanketed the mountains and choked the valley, making each day feel like an apocalyptic event lurked around the corner.

I’d closed the windows the night before because it seemed better to suffer the heat than to inhale the dense, toxic air. A fly had furiously buzzed along the windowsill, captive in the stagnant room. For a good half hour, I listened to its maddening buzz and its random, annoying flights. After I tried to swat at it when it flew too close to my face a number of times, it settled somewhere on the ash-covered sill and left me alone. I finally drifted off listening to the whir of the ceiling fan. Of course, I thought, such circumstances would give anyone a restless night. I’d probably just kicked the covers down to get some air.

I swung my feet to the wood-planked floor, pleased to feel the smooth slats under my soles, and sat for a second rubbing my arms. The morning light filtered through the smoky sky and stretched across the golden floor like gauze, turning it a sickly yellowish orange. I looked out the window, hopelessly wanting to see something wet—some freshly soaked pavement, leaves dripping with moisture, or soil darkened by rain. It was bone-dry, the grass in the small yard turned beige, the leaves on the tips of the bushes tinged yellow. The pine trees in the side woods appeared diseased with reddish-brown needles, many already fallen and desiccated on the forest floor as if it were fall. There was no relief in the forecast.

I picked up my phone from the bedside table and checked for messages. There were none, so I headed to the bathroom to shower and get ready to go into the lab. Nothing too pressing was going on, but I needed to finish some paperwork on a deceased man—a young firefighter, in fact—from the day before. He’d been found separated from his crew, sitting still against a tree as if he were simply enjoying a peaceful moment in the forest, watching swallows diving in and out of branches or listening to the chickadees sing their songs, before continuing on his way. Only, in these fire-infested woods, there would be no birdsong. The ME determined that it was his heart—an arrhythmia—but we’d been called in before the ME made that determination just in case there was foul play.

I’d almost forgotten about my bedcovers when I looked in the mirror one last time, checking that my shoulder-length blond hair was secured neatly away from my face and that the small amount of blush I’d applied wasn’t on too thick. Not out of vanit…