Boundary by Andree Michaud is a story set in Canada in the late 1960s. It’s the height of summer and families are arriving at the resort of Boundary for their annual holiday. The place is idyllic, despite the ghost stories surrounding one of the earlier residents Pierre, a trapper who lived in the woods. Unfortunately the peace and tranquillity is soon broken when a young girl called Zaza goes missing. Quickly the mood turns to fear and distrust when her body if found caught in a bear trap.
I have to confess I’m not sure this was a book for me, as I found it very hard to get into. The first half of the story is quite slow. It is very descriptive not only of the setting, but also the inner thoughts and feeling of the characters. This made it feel very different to the normal edge of the seat thrillers I gravitate towards. However once I got into the rhythm of the prose, it did draw me in. I wanted to keep reading but this was because of the language more than to find out the crime solution.
The story is told mainly from the viewpoints of the detectives hunting the killer but we also hear from young local girl Andree who was fascinated with Zara and her friend. To Andree the girls were seemingly so grown up and glamorous she longed to join in. Unfortunately I didn’t feel that the distinction between the characters voices was particularly clear which meant that I had to flit back and forth in order to keep track of who was narrating. This could of course be also partly due to my habit of skim reading so isn’t necessarily down to the writing. It has also been translated from French so again some of the phrases used were a little unfamiliar.
One thing I did really like about the novel was the sense of a place that you got from it. You could feel the isolation of the lives of those who normally live in the area contrasted with the change during tourist season when it becomes a thriving lake side town. The characters themselves were interesting. I liked the way the detectives interacted with each other, and the pace of the investigation felt realistic.
Overall for me this was a slow burner, that picked up pace in the later stages. However, if you like a well written, descriptive story focussing on people’s emotions and lives as much as the actual crime then this is well worth a read.
A crime readers blog 