Book Log #83: Manhunter, by Loreth Anne White

This one I picked up entirely on the recommendation of a guest review at Smart Bitches Trashy Books, because a) it’s set in the Canadian north, and b) the hero is a Mountie. I’m a Due South fan, what can I say?

Anyway, we have a nice recipe for suspense here with our hero, Sergeant Gabriel Caruso, being deployed to the tiny Yukon town of Black Arrow Falls as their new RCMP officer. He’s running from the fallout of a case gone horribly, horribly wrong, wherein his beloved partner had been killed and he himself had been seriously wounded in the effort to catch a psychotic killer. And the Yukon, as far as he can tell, is as good a place as any to hide. Only there’s a local tracker, Silver Karvonen, who stirs his interest–and to their horror, the very killer Gabriel had put away has escaped and has followed him north to take him out. Gabriel and Silver must band together to protect themselves and the town, while confronting both their pasts.

As romance novels go, this one was fun. Points for a remote and unforgiving setting, and extra points for the heroine not being lily-white; she’s half-Finnish and half Black Arrow Gwitchin, which makes her stand out wonderfully for me against the usual run of English or American heroines I’m used to. She is an excellent heroine for the setting as well–not only because of her tracking skills, but also for how she had to deal with the incident of trauma in her past, a secret she doesn’t dare reveal to Gabriel lest she sacrifice her freedom.

And around all of this, the hunt for the escaped killer was suitably creepy and suspenseful. Four stars.