NORDIC NIGHTS

On the eve of the winter festival in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, ice sculptures take shape in the park; Norwegian artist Glasius Dokken suffers an ice pick to the back; and gallery owner Alix Thorssen’s visiting stepfather, Hank Helgeson, cools his heels in jail after he’s found standing over Dokken’s corpse. Backtracking from that arresting opening, McClendon’s third effort (Painted Truth, 1995, etc.) introduces the pre-mortem Dokken, his Norwegian-American compatriots—Olympic skier Bjarne Hansen plus Alix’s mother, Una, and her husband, Hank—and the bizarre locals who arise like ice gargoyles to greet them: Native-American lawyer Roscoe Penn, who’s as likely to wear a coonskin cap as feathers when he drives his longhorn-bedecked turquoise cruiser; the charismatic, rune-reading fortune-teller and white witch Mistress Isa; and bead-shop owner Cosmic Connie, nÇe Doreen MacAllister. Soon enough, Dokken is dead, Hank is charged with killing him, and Norwegian artifacts begin to disappear and reappear. There—ll be a suspicious fire and a series of accidents, the obligatory revelations about Hank’s past, and Alix’s decision to take deliberate action, which makes her and her mother damsels-in-distress. Although her final stakeout reveals a tangle of crimes, Alix is curiously passive, despite her sudden bursts of activity. Savvy readers will enjoy the glimpses of Nordic ritual, the vivid descriptions of the Wyoming winter, and the pattern of fire and ice as Alix’s emotions fight logic and the heated passions around her fight icy greed.