cover image The Greenland Breach

The Greenland Breach

Bernard Besson, trans. from the French by Julie Rose. Le French (www.lefrenchbook.com), $9.99 ebook (285p) ISBN 978-1-939474-94-0 (Kindle)

The warming climate has reached an inflection point and vast sheets of Greenland's ice collapses, inundating New York and nearby cities, as helpless observers stand by in horror. The calamity creates opportunity for the Franco-Danish research company, Terre Noire, and its Canadian rival, North Land, to exploit the resources of a rapidly changing Arctic. The murder and dismemberment of a scientist serves as prelude to sabotage and assassination. Meanwhile, former intelligence officer John Spencer Lariviere and his colleagues at Fermatown unknowingly step into a war between undeclared factions when they search for a missing person amidst industrial espionage. Billed as a "Cli-fi thriller," this is cousin to thoughtful works such as Buckell's Arctic Rising, but the narrative's tone and tendency toward grand spectacle resembles more lurid thrillers like The Day After Tomorrow. The result is a book filled with violent action, betrayal, sexual assault, and brutal death%E2%80%94perhaps at the expense of plausibility. Nevertheless, Besson, a former chief of staff for the French intelligence services, constructs a complex plot and confidently portrays the grandiosity as it unfolds. (Nov.)