The thriller The Black Mists will certainly not contribute to a resurgence of tourism in the Faroe Islands, a Danish archipelago: the weather is terrible and the inhabitants are represented as bloodthirsty louts.
The author, the Frenchman Patrice Gain, does not err on the side of subtlety. His novel is a frontal charge against the hunting of whales and dolphins in the Faroe Islands, a traditional activity that he describes with a lot of blood and viscera.
The Black Fogs tells the story of Raphaël Chauvet, a cellist who goes in search of his daughter Maude, who disappeared while taking part in a campaign by the organization Ocean Keeper against whale hunting. In this story, the young NGO activists are the good guys, the Faroese are the bad guys. There are some inhabitants who are against hunting, but they do not dare to make their opinion known. A Faroese woman, however, expresses what many readers in Eastern Canada, who have seen NGOs and celebrities descending to condemn the seal hunt, might think: “Tell your daughter and her friends that if they want it to stop , you don’t have to come anymore. The weather and the pollution of the oceans will do the job better than them. »
It must be recognized that Patrice Gain knows how to create a disturbing, suffocating atmosphere. The plot is well done, there is no downtime. We can wonder about Raphaël’s choices, but we understand his motivations. However, the well-meaning neo-colonialism that underlies the text can end up annoying.
