It is the year 2051. Warnings of climate catastrophe have been ignored,
and vast areas of the planet are under water, or uninhabitably hot. A
quarter of the world's population has been displaced by hunger and
flooding, and immigration wars are breaking out around the globe as
refugees pour into neighboring countries.
By contrast, melting ice sheets have brought the Gulf Stream to a halt
and northern latitudes, including Scotland, are being hit by snow and
ice storms. It is against this backdrop that Addie, a young
meteorologist checking a mountain top weather station, discovers the
body of a man entombed in ice.
The dead man is investigative reporter, George Younger, missing for
three months after vanishing during what he claimed was a hill-walking
holiday. But Younger was no hill walker, and his discovery on a
mountain-top near the Highland village of Kinlochleven, is inexplicable.
Cameron Brodie, a veteran Glasgow detective, volunteers to be flown
north to investigate Younger's death, but he has more than a murder
enquiry on his agenda. He has just been given a devastating medical
prognosis by his doctor and knows the time has come to face his
estranged daughter who has made her home in the remote Highland village.
Arriving during an ice storm, Brodie and pathologist Dr. Sita Roy, find
themselves the sole guests at the inappropriately named International
Hotel, where Younger's body has been kept refrigerated in a cake
cabinet. But evidence uncovered during his autopsy places the lives of
both Brodie and Roy in extreme jeopardy.
As another storm closes off communications and the possibility of
escape, Brodie must face up not only to the ghosts of his past, but to a
killer determined to bury forever the chilling secret that George
Younger's investigations had threatened to expose.
A Winter Grave is Peter May at his page-turning, passionate and
provocative best.
