Published by LTD Books
ISBN Disk: 1-55316-084-3
ISBN Rocket: 1-55316-918-2
ISBN Paperback: 1-55316-084-3
Price: PDF: $4.95 HTML: $6.95 CD: $8.95
This book grabbed me with the first sentence, the first paragraph: 'Footsteps were following her. She was sure of it. Every nerve twitched as she stopped walking and strained to listen. Nothing. She laughed at herself, a quick embarrassed laugh. Must be my imagination; imagine me being frightened like some kind of snotty-nosed little kid.'
Whiteout by Vicki Delany is set in a location she obviously knows and loves: far north in Ontario. The landscape is alive, as are the characters, sketched in with a sure hand. This is very much a woman's book, full of the kinds of details a woman would notice and want to find out about, but without becoming tedious. The language is crisp, though my pre-publication copy still had a few mistakes.
I found it refreshing that the heroine was called Joanna. It seems to be a fashion among authors nowadays to give their characters unusual names, to the point where I don't know if it's a boy or a girl. This drive for realism and immediate relevance to modern life shows in the rest of the book too. So, when Joanna comes in increasing contact with the ghost of an unfortunate young woman, the supernatural seems real too.
Whiteout is a murder mystery, but an unusual one. Just the same, in the tradition of murder stories, Delany gives us hints. See if you can deduce the identity of the killer.
I found the best part near the very end: a woman and a girl, lost in a blizzard. It was so real that I was shivering, in the heatwave of an Australian summer.
Vicki wanted to write for many years but the pressure of a growing family