MALCOLM KEMPT chats to Paul Burke about A GIFT BEFORE DYING, the Arctic, Inuit culture, reading outside your genre and handing out guns to prisoners.

A GIFT BEFORE DYING
AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, CAN JUSTICE STILL BE FOUND?
After a botched high-profile murder investigation, Sergeant Elderick Cole is exiled to the remote, rugged landscape of Nunavut, a vast territory in the Arctic Circle known for its untamed beauty, frigid temperatures, and endless winter nights.
His bleak existence takes a sinister turn when he discovers the hanging body of Pitseolala, a troubled Inuit girl whom he had sworn to protect. Her death dredges up demons he thought he'd buried along with the scars of a fractured marriage and the aching divide between himself and his estranged daughter.
As Cole's life unravels - and with it, the fragile thread of his investigation - he turns to Pitseolala's younger brother, Maliktu, a fellow outsider. It's then that Cole uncovers what binds them: a singular mission to find her killer.
Against fierce backlash, Cole's overriding desire to redeem just one aspect of his otherwise failed life becomes an obsession - and he's willing to break every rule in his unyielding pursuit of justice and the smallest shred of redemption.

Malcolm Kempt worked as a criminal lawyer in the remote Arctic for seventeen years before leaving to write full time. He now lives on the island of Newfoundland. A Gift Before Dying is his debut novel.

Recommended: Ilaria Tuti Flowers Over the Inferno (also Italian TV series on Walter Presents Channel 4 UK), British Library Classics, True Detective (TV) 

Paul Burke is the editor of Crime Time FM, Aspects of Crime and is a CWA Dagger judge. His first book,a spy film anthology, will be published in September, '26.

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