It's the year 2151, climate change has ravaged the planet, huge swathes of land are underwater (including half of Glasgow, where the novel opens properly), refugee crises are worse than ever, the UK has split and Scotland is an independent state. In the middle of all this backdrop, a dead body is found frozen on a Scottish mountaintop.
Veteran cop Cameron Brodie has just found out he has a life ending illness. He volunteers to take the case. He has an ulterior motive since his estranged daughter is the person who found the body and he wants to reconnect before the end. He finds a lot more than family problems in the sleepy village, he finds a conspiracy worth killing for.
It's a very busy novel. May is juggling lots of plotlines and it has to be said that he does this with ease. The detective mystery bit of the story almost takes back seat. The number of potential suspects is very low so the answers are relatively predictable.
There are some unlikely elements to the story and the science really doesn't seem to have improved much since 2023 when this was written. The worldbuilding is done extremely well though. The politics are woven nicely into the story and the climate issues never feel like preaching.
This is much better than Lockdown by the same author that I read back in 2020. I will be trying more of his books as soon as I can get around to them. This has shifted him up the readability meter by a fair distance.
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