Peter James

Everyone can have a bad day now and then, but we meet Valerie on a morning that divides her life neatly into before and after. It took one inconsequential setback – a silly thing, really – to cause a slight delay in Valerie’s schedule, resulting in a regrettable distraction, causing an unfortunate incident, which leads her to the police station….. making her miss the single most important event she had on her agenda: The Meeting! That’s when the dam breaks. All that control to build the fragile framework of her life collapses instantly. Valerie gets fired, is obliged to restrain her lifestyle, and now with the shared custody of her son in question, Valerie has to review her priorities and reorganize her life.

Chief inspector Constance Forest and her team match wits with petty criminals of all kinds in the fog-shrouded North Shore of Montreal.

When Gérard finds a dead raccoon in his front yard, the old man becomes strangely distressed, shaken by thoughts of his own demise. Jocelyne watches the despair of her husband grow along with his obsession with the animal’s body, and his anguish takes root in her own mind. After a night of torment, they decide to go and bury the raccoon on the land where their house once stood in Joutel, a former mining town deserted since 1998. When they get there, the boreal forest is creeping in on the ruins of her former house, plunging Jocelyne into a deep nostalgia. Here, after a morbid picnic marking the raccoon’s burial, the couple meets a mystical being who leads them to make peace with their inner demons.