'e~ The Boy In The Snow is a thrilling chiller . Wrap up warmly. M. J. McGrath's earlier Arctic-set outing White Heat may have borrowed its title from an old James Cagney film but was in every other respect a totally original piece of work, demonstrating for a first novel an authoritative grasp of the thriller idiom. That book made people sit up and take notice but inevitably raised expectations for its successor. Has McGrath managed to match her achievement with The Boy In The Snow, the second book to feature her female Inuit hunter turned sleuth Edie Kiglatuk? . As anybody who has read McGrath's earlier book will know she is an author with a quietly impressive command of character.

Edie is a heroine with whom it is extremely easy to identify, however alien her lifestyle will be to most of us. Yet the author's real skill is in the astonishing evocation of the frigid landscape, along with the sharply conjured details of Inuit life. What's more, McGrath is able to keep all these elements satisfyingly balanced, even as the tormented past of Edie begins to invade the present. The burying of secrets in both the physical and metaphorical sense in a snowbound landscape is hardly a new idea but McGrath makes us feel we are encountering it for the first time. This is turning into a series that readers will want to follow with close attention'e(tm) Barry Forshaw, Daily Express.