40 Words for Sorrow: 🙁

After enjoying No Such Creature so much I got the first in the Cardinal detective series by Canadian crime writer (as the internet calls him) Giles Blunt. Four or five pages in I got worried: the murder victim is a young indigenous woman in a remote northern community. Okay, I think, so much crime fiction is about murdering young women and splashing their bodies about, let’s see where this goes. No where good. The detectives talk about how the “Indian” community is “different” and “not like us” and drops in Windigo stories and haunting spirits. Granted the novel pivots to killing other non-indigenous characters (men, too!), but the initial dive into the detective and the community is one of stereotypes and racist tropes. And then also that ugly women are destined to be unloved, unloveable and consequently MURDERERS. Sooooo… pass.