In the remote Arctic community of Inussuk, seven graves are dug at the end of each summer, before the ground freezes. As winter approaches, the question is, will they be enough?
When Constable David Maratse is invalided off the force, he moves to a small settlement to live the life of a subsistence hunter and fisherman. But when his long line hooks the body of a politician’s daughter, he finds himself both prime suspect and lead investigator in Greenland’s most sensational murder case.
“Petersen brings Greenland to life, and death to Greenland. A tale of extraordinary people in an extraordinary setting. I was gripped from the first grave.” Michael Ridpath
“The Arctic chill has never been as seductive as in Christoffer Petersen’s books.” Lilja Sigurðardóttir
Seven Graves, One Winter is the first of five full-length novels featuring Greenlandic Police Constable David Maratse.
“Dark, fresh crime fiction from the far north.” Quentin Bates
“You might want to put your warmest coat on. Christoffer Petersen writes chilling thrillers in harsh, isolated environments. Too dark for some. Too cold for everyone.” Óskar Guðmundsson
“No one writes Arctic Noir like Petersen! Bleak landscapes, action-packed thrillers, fabulous cultural insight and a cast of intriguing characters that simply leave you wanting more!” Dr Noir
Seven Graves, One Winter is the first book in Christoffer Petersen’s Greenland Crime series. If you like Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series and Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s Freyja and Huldar books then you’ll love Christoffer Petersen’s dark crime thriller set in the world’s most exciting Arctic location.
Pick up Seven Graves, One Winter to begin your adventure to the darker side of Greenland today!
They dug the graves on the mountain’s knee, in the stubborn earth pinched between boulders of granite. The graveyard was small, but large enough to accommodate the mothers, fathers, sons and daughters of Inussuk, from the time when the first grave replaced the last cairn, and babies that succumbed to the winter were no longer mummified. The winters were just as dark, the summers just as bright, but the deaths had slowed, and food, from the sea or the store, was easier to come by. But still they dug the graves each long summer, in anticipation of each dark winter when tuberculosis might take a grandparent or a grandchild, when a winter storm might take a hunter, or a depression might force someone to take their own life. They dug two graves for suicide, hoping they were two too many. They dug one for a drunken brawl, one for a fishing accident, one for the stillborn child they knew was waiting in the tiny morgue of the medical centre, one terrible boat ride away. They dug a sixth grave for old age. The seventh they dug for cancer. Even in the Arctic, always cancer.
Seven Graves, One Winter was the game changer. I quit my teaching job in December 2017 because Fenna’s books were selling. Not huge, but enough for me to naively think this might just work. It was a nice idea but don’t quit the day job moment. But I rarely listen to them, and I quit the day job, thinking I had a few months to make a go of it. Maratse and Seven Graves, One Winter changed all that, changed my thinking and my future. Seven Graves, One Winter made it possible to at least attempt to live the dream, and I gave it my best shot and had a lot of fun in the process!
And in conversation with Arne Dahl, October 2019.
My journey with Seven Graves, One Winter is not over, of course, it’s only just beginning. But it’s good for me to remember when it started, and what happened along the way. February 14th 2018, the day Seven Graves, One Winter went live on Amazon, is a Valentine’s Day to remember.
