It's 2004 and Jo was a journalist in Vancouver. Because of a scandal, she accepts the position of editor of the newspaper in Dawson City, Yukon. She arrives just before the town freezes up for the winter ... so all access to and from Dawson City will be cut off. When she arrives, she discovers the newspaper is published on a weekly basis and the list of reporters is actually pen names of the editor, who is also a full-time teacher.
On the day she arrives in Dawson City, she gets hammered with her new landlady at a bar and vaguely remembers being driven home by Christopher, one of the locals. A woman in a red coat yells at them as they are leaving the bar ... and then turns up murdered the next day. Jo can't vouch for her whereabouts that night and becomes the number one suspect. Determined to clear her name and deliver the story, she starts to investigate to find the killer.
I really wanted to like this book since it is Canadian and set in the North (there aren't a lot of mysteries set there). But I got about halfway through and finally gave up ... and then jumped ahead to the last couple of chapters to see whodunnit. I didn't enjoy the writing style as I found it draggy. I didn't like any of the characters. I hated how the author dragged things out ... for example, there are lots of references as to why Jo left Vancouver but we don't find out the story until about a third of the way in. Christopher knew exactly what happened the night he drove Jo home but she remembers nothing and I found it annoying that he kept insinuating things that happened without telling her (or us).
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