The Frequency by Randall D. St. Claire tells the
story of Bronx Rousselle, a former minor-league hockey enforcer and Marine
veteran now working as a pawnbroker in Warroad, Minnesota. Heather Li, a nurse,
trades a box of Inuit artifacts in exchange for a discreet flight out of town, and
Bronx reluctantly agrees. The box contains cryptic letters from her shaman
great-grandfather describing a whale that turned into stone. That single deal disrupts
Bronx’s life in mysterious ways as assassins start coming for him, his friends
die, and his shop and home are ransacked. The trail points to a secret Nazi
energy experiment buried in the Arctic since 1944. With help from a stubborn old cop, a witty dancer named Malina, and a one-eared Greenland wolf, Bronx journeys from Minnesota to a remote fjord in Greenland to uncover the truth and face the powerful men willing to kill to keep it hidden.
Randall D. St. Claire writes with a voice that’s equal parts
grin and gravel, and Bronx's point of view is captured with compelling
aphorisms (“Winter wasn't cruel—it was honest. It told everyone where they
stood”) and the cheerfully grim humor that makes him impossible to ignore. This book blends genres effortlessly, starting from a small-town crime caper to a historical conspiracy to an Arctic survival epic without missing any bit of the entertainment. The pacing is fast, with short chapters, sharp cliffhangers, and
timely paragraph breaks that keep you turning the pages. Although the
Greenland scenes are deliberately slow, it’s there the book finds its heart,
where the wolf Driftwood steals the story. The story pulsates with action, from
a motel shootout to a charging polar bear. The author skillfully examines redemption,
loyalty, greed, and purpose while delivering a finely drawn setting from Warroad's
dive bars to the icy landscapes of Greenland. The Frequency is funny, gripping, and surprisingly tender; a page-turner with a morally gray hero.