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Winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2006.
An extraordinarily good book. At its centre it’s a murder mystery but just putting it in one ‘genre’ simply doesn’t do it justice, for a first novel it’s incredibly accomplished. The setting is Canada in the winter of 1867, Scottish settlers rub up against French trappers and they all distrust and abuse the resident Indian tribes. A violent murder and a missing son puts the community of Dove River in the spot light and tests the morals and relationships of everyone involved. Definitely worth buying the hardback. However the paperback is now out - click here for more information
Costa Book Awards 2006 Judges' comment: "The Tenderness of Wolves is atmospheric, gripping and compassionate and perfectly evokes the snowy wastes of nineteenth-century Canada."
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Synopsis
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
1867, Canada - As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man's cabin head north towards the forest and the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township - journalists, Hudson's Bay Company men, trappers, traders - but do they want to solve the crime, or exploit it? One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a forgotten Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation and humour into a panoramic historical romance, an exhilarating thriller, a keen murder mystery and ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, one of the books of the year.
Reviews
This subtle and superb novel brings the freezing landscape of the Canadian woods to such vivid life that the landscape itself becomes a strong character within the story. Once you have dived into the tiny, closeted world of Caulfield and its forbidding surroundings, you will certainly not wish to leave. Crimesquad.com
Stef Penney's hefty first novel The Tenderness of Wolves, mines her setting and period for all it's got and then some, injecting plenty of invented intrigue and Da Vinci Code like revelations of Huge Cultural Importance whenever she can. The result is an entertaining, well-constructed mystery that jazzes up the real history in a way that's more Ron Howard than Pierre Berton. It's sexy, suspenseful, densely plotted storytelling The Tenderness of Wolves remains a first-rate gripper with a notably sensual as well as psychological understanding of its main characters. More than this, it is a novel with far greater ambitions than your average thriller, combining as it does the themes of Conrad's Heart of Darkness with Atwood's Survival, and lashing them to a story that morphs Ian Rankin
Andrew Pyper, The Globe and Mail
a highly-assured debut .Stef Penney has written an absorbing and stylish mystery. The Glasgow Herald
a quite remarkable debut novel.
Birmingham Post
About the Author
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Stef Penney was born and grew up in Edinburgh. After a degree in Philosophy and Theology from Bristol University she turned to film-making, studying Film and TV at Bournemouth College of Art. On graduation she was selected for the Carlton Television New Writers Scheme and has since written and directed two short films.
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Crime / Who-dunit
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