Northern Lights – Nora Roberts

Reeling from the death of his partner, a shooting for which he blames himself, Nate Burke’s left his job as Baltimore cop to be the first Chief of Police in the tiny town of Lunacy, Alaska, population 500 and change, including the sort of eccentric characters small towns are known for – the aging beauty who’ll sleep with any man passing through, and a pair of twins who’ll fight each other half to the death over any disagreement. Nate half expects to pull out before his probationary time is up, but from the beginning he sleeps through the night for the first time since Jack was shot, and he is instantly attracted to fiercely independent pilot Meg Galloway.
An Outsider from the Lower 48, Nate knows it’ll be some time until he’s accepted, especially as he makes changes the town aren’t all happy about – he refuses to kowtow to the town’s wealthy resident, banker Ed Woolcott; he locks up Drunk Jim, the town dipsomaniac, whenever he goes on a bender. As he expects, most of the crimes in town are relatively minor, but when a group of college students (local boy Stephen and some friends) find the body of a frozen man in a mountain cave while getting lost winter mountain climbing, Nate finds himself investigating a murder, and the crime, committed sixteen years earlier, continues to ripple through modern-day Lunacy.
Lynn and I have not had great success with Nora Roberts thus far, but a friend highly recommended Northern Lights. I was initially irritated by the writing style, primarily by the short paragraphs (no longer than three sentences, and often only one), but as the characters and the plot - both interesting, absorbing, layered and coherent - began to engage me this faded until I didn’t notice it at all. I particularly liked that Meg was able to fend for herself, a fact respected by Nate, but that this was tempered by restraint, so she didn’t brainlessly dart into danger (except when her dogs were threatened). The ‘physical love’ scenes were well executed, with enough detail without being unnecessarily explicit, and the attraction is plausible.
The mystery adds a framework for the series and mercifully obviates the need for artificial obstacles to the romance, and the Alaskan environment (where winter shades into summer in sync with Nate’s recovery), including the Inuit characters, create a subtle but distinct background. I won’t be rushing to read everything Roberts has written (a task which would occupy most of 2009 in any case) but I’m open to another novel. – Alex