Heh, I took this book because it had a "reader's award" and was 3€, and I needed some light reading to waste time during a trek and was intrigued by the synopsis (a mystery thriller about fishing legislation in Quebec). Honestly, very disappointed.

The book alternates between a thriller narrative and actual news transcripts/fictional historical short-stories from the past. The latter are the strongest and best sections of this book, the former is incredibly cliché. They suffer from the "man writing woman" syndrome where every female character is discussed as food for the men. Either as romantic interests or straight up meat for the bad guys to rape (or discuss raping.) They are here for the men to rescue. I honestly don't care much about this were it done well but it's honestly a little overplayed and repetitive. There are also action sequences (I'm starting to think novels aren't meant for action sequences) that are very quick and hard to care for. Basically step by step descriptions of a mediocre Netflix action-flick. Finally, the dialog. I get that this is a political novel, but I'm starting to think all Quebecois can talk about is their weird nationalism. Because every conversation in this book, no matter the initial topic, devolves into a heated debate about Quebec nationalism in some way or another. It's very jarring.

Overall this book struggles to be both an engaging thriller and a political/historical piece. It should've focused on the latter because the thriller was deeply unengaging, I could hardly give a shit by the end about any of the characters or their outcome and mostly enjoyed the short stories in-between.