Urban Waite has created a thriller that is as suspenseful and soaked with blood as a hearty crime book should be, but is as beautifully crafted as the snowy environment in which it is set.

In the North American wilderness, a plane drops a delivery of drugs into the woods; out to collect it is Hunt, a man who has been in the wrong place at the wrong time all his life, and the kid employed to help him. In the same neighbourhood with a bad feeling is Deputy Bobby Drake, haunted by his policeman father’s criminal past and angry with the legacy this has left behind. This drug bust goes very wrong very quickly, and soon begins a chase between Hunt, trying to protect the small life he has made for himself; Drake, wanting to prove himself honest despite the sympathy he feels for Hunt; Grady, the hired killer sent to fix the situation; and those at the helm of the crime, wanting to make all the problems go away.

The Terror of Living manages to be both gripping and action-packed, while written in a smoothly evocative style that makes the bloodied deaths (and there is a suitably large amount of those) as picturesque as the landscape. Icy killer Grady and his bag of knives is a genuinely chilling character (I can’t help but use these words when the book is set in the snow, sorry) and a direct counterpart to Hunt, a smart man who has been in the wrong industry for so long he had forgotten the dangers implicit in his career. Both Hunt and Drake are men trying to succeed and be good despite their pasts, and when they and those closest to them are threatened you will find yourself anxiously biting your nails and fretting in the lunchroom.

Urban Waite’s first book is a solid debut that will no doubt spark a successful career in making people squirm.