2023-09-26 10:07:47
This thriller, a new novel by Morgan Audic, takes us into the grandiose landscapes of the Arctic Circle and the Norwegian Sea, where two women are found dead 1,000 kilometers away.
“No one dies in Longyearbyen.” In the Svalbard archipelago, in the middle of the Greenland Sea, is the northernmost city in the world. It’s a local joke, partly born from an old municipal decree dating from 1950 which prohibited people from being buried in the town cemetery. Because of the freezing temperatures, the bodies never decomposed!
So no one dies in Longyearbyen. And yet… The body of a student is found on the ice floe, her face and body torn to pieces, probably lacerated by a bear. A rare “accident”, but hardly surprising. Ursids are omnipresent and, due to global warming, they increasingly tend to move closer to places occupied by humans. Especially since next to the victim, there is this stranded sperm whale. An immense reserve of fat which must have attracted the animal. What an idea to go out without a weapon too! Young Agneta should have known: she studied marine mammals, she knew the environment and its dangers…
Few people commit suicide in the Lofoten Islands. The men – sailors – are tough there, accustomed to this gray sea where, in all weathers, people fish for herring and cod, and until recently, for whales. Descendants of Vikings, blond or red-haired giants, who were given a knife and an oilskin for their eighth birthday. But another woman is found drowned on an isolated beach and she was not from here: Asa was an ex-journalist, a city girl, converted to underwater safaris, a divorcee.
Endless winter
Two deaths a few days apart, which have nothing in common except that both women were interested in marine animals… However, in both cases, the deaths raise eyebrows. In Svalbard, it is a stubborn policewoman who is surprised by the version presented by the two guards who found the body. They work in Pyramiden, a mining town formerly managed by the Russians, now a ghost town; an anomaly linked to the status of the archipelago: for a long time terra nullius, it had been attached to Norway following the First World War with the possibility for neighboring countries to continue to exploit its subsoil. During the Soviet Union, a thousand workers worked here. Today, all that remains are abandoned buildings and ruined factories. But the two guards are uncomfortable, contradict each other, and remain silent when the Russian consul himself arrives by helicopter…
In the Lofoten Islands, he is a great reporter, a former friend of Asa who cannot imagine that his colleague, so solid on all war fronts, could have decided to end her life. Especially since she had enemies, these bloodthirsty whale fishermen. In her home there were piles of photos of stranded dolphins, belugas and orcas, some terribly mutilated, runes or threatening messages carved with a knife into their flesh… Only a madman or a sadist could commit such horrors. A madman. Capable of killing an overly curious environmentalist?
This is the start of two investigations, more than 1,000 kilometers apart, in the grandiose theaters of the Polar Circle or the Norwegian Sea. Universes where winter is endless, “more than three months without any light other than that of electric lights or the greenish northern lights”. As for the decor: “The long tear of ice-clotted fjords and the vast wild lands of Spitsbergen, an endless swell of rocky ridges and snow-covered valleys. An arena built for trolls and giants, certainly not for men.” An oppressive thriller, written by a man who knows the sea well (Morgan Audic was born in Saint-Malo and lives in Cancale) and countries with winters of snow and blizzards (his previous novel, Good Reasons to Die, took place between Ukraine and Russia). A beautiful thriller, wild and frozen.
Nobody dies in Longyearbyen by Morgan Audic, Albin Michel, 376 pp., 21.90 euros.
#dies #Longyearbyen #armed #Libération