The story in City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita has a very interesting setting that is actually a city under one roof, literally in one building in Alaska.
Yamashita is a successful hollywood screenwriter and this is her debut novel. The mystery story is set in the town of Mettier, Alaska. This is a town that empties during the winter, is connected to the outside world by just one tunnel and boats during navigable weather. The yearlong residents of the town live in just one high rise building,. All town amenities are also in the same building, including the police station, grocery store, a motel, snowmobile rental store, school, and even a take-out chinese restaurant. Who would want to live in a "town"like this but only people who are running away from something and do not want to be found, each for their own reasons. The situation seems too crazy to make up. I Googled Mettier and only came up with references to this novel. So, I guess the setting did come out of Yamashita's fertile imagination. Another crazy thing is that body parts are found to be washing up on the town's shore. In this setting the body parts are attributed to some unfortunate souls that maybe fell out of cruise ships. Is that a thing that happens often enough for a mystery writer to have heard about and to include in a story? That is really scary and might scare me off cruises in the future. Let us just hope that this is something else that came out of Yamashita's imagination.
The body parts washing up at this stage apprently indicate foul play and attract the local police's (two guys) attention.Then Cara Kennedy shows up from Alaskans State police, purporting to be investigating the crime. There is an avalanche, the tunnel is blocked, and Cara is stuck in this city until the snow is cleared or the end of winter, whichever comes first. Cara has her own background tragedy that connects to the murder. There are tattooed bad guys sporting automatic weapons and teenagers caught in the middle of some old ongoing feud related to drugs and money, what else.
The story is interesing and keeps you wanting to read more. Apparently, the book was successful enought that Cara Kennedy is going to show up in Yamashita's future mystery novels.
