Imagine the mountains around Glasgow in the middle of November. Add to that a morose inspector who has just learned that his cancer only leaves him a few months to live. And add to this gloomy atmosphere a generalized blackout, caused by extreme phenomena, because it is 2051 and climate change has completely disrupted the weather on the planet. All this from the pen of a great virtuoso who is among the most widely read British authors in the world.
Anticipation novels have been plentiful among the new releases in literature for some time. But Storm over Kinlochleven is above all a bewitching thriller that grabs us to the point of making us forget at certain moments that times have changed.
Detective Cameron Brodie must investigate the suspicious death of a journalist who was found trapped in the ice near the top of the mountain. He’s not old, but he’s experienced so many technological and social changes in his half-century of life that he feels completely overwhelmed. A widower, he has not spoken to his daughter for 10 years and this investigation turns out to be the ideal pretext to reconnect with her, since it was she who discovered the journalist’s body.
What was he investigating that someone wanted to eliminate him? The answer delves into the issue of the day in this “post-fossil” era: energy supply.
In this almost abandoned mountain village, where the only hotel to accommodate Inspector Brodie and the forensic doctor who accompanies him seems straight out of the movie The Shiningwe discover how our world could be transformed – and we come to believe it.
It’s terrifying, full of blood-curdling descriptions that completely immerse us in the isolation and fear of this freezing rain storm that is hitting the region hard, cutting off all means of communication to reach the command post from Glasgow. And everything is based on concrete data, since the author explains at the end of the book that he even consulted a speaker from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to make his “climate change scenario” completely accurate. credible fact.
So if you like thrillers as much as dystopias, you will love this clever mix of dark novel and suspense which transports us completely elsewhere.
Storm over Kinlochleven
Le Rouergue
344 pages