Stef Penney’s debut novel is a complex story centred on a murder in the small Canadian settlement of Dove River. The story opens in 1867 with the discovery of a dead body and a missing son. Penney (who is, in fact, Scottish) has written a richly detailed mystery that brings the isolation of the Canadian North vividly to life.

When Mrs. Ross discovers the body of local trapper Laurent Jammet, and her son becomes the main suspect, it falls to her to find the killer. The trail leads out of Dove River to Hudson’s Bay Company posts and a Norwegian religious community.

The story, which alternates between Mrs. Ross’s first-person account and the third-person perspectives of the supporting characters (and there are many of these), suffers at times for being a bit over ambitious in scope. A quick count puts the number of characters at more than two dozen, each of whom is well fleshed out. Unfortunately, this makes The Tenderness of Wolves a frustrating read. Penney is very adept at creating interesting characters but doesn’t seem to know when to stop. The flight of a couple from the Norwegian village would work well as an entirely separate story, whereas here it serves more as a distraction from the main plot. Penney explores the budding romantic feelings between many of the characters, adding depth to their personalities, but the relationships do not lead anywhere.

As the story builds to a fairly exciting conclusion, some readers may find themselves wondering why it has taken so long to arrive. The greed, murder, and career ambition at the heart of the book are enough to build a thrilling story; adding subplots about cloistered villages, the key to an undiscovered written native language, and a decade-old mystery about missing sisters makes it harder to suspend disbelief when the threads are tied up.

Stef Penney is clearly a talented writer, and each piece of The Tenderness of Wolves is well-crafted, but as a whole there are just a few too many of those pieces to hold together.