I would like to thank Netgalley and Quercus Books for an advance copy of The Mountain, a thriller set in the Alto Adige, the German speaking part of Italy.

Jeremiah Salinger is a successful documentary maker and hits upon the idea of following the Dolomite mountain rescue service in his wife's small Italian town for a new series. It is all going well until an accident with the crew leaves no survivors but Salinger. Suffering from PTSD he overhears a conversation about an unsolved murder on the mountains in 1985 and resolves to solve in an attempt to aid his recovery. It is not a subject the villagers wish to discuss and his persistence causes all sorts of problems.

I think that how much you enjoy this novel will depend on what you like to read. I didn't particularly enjoy it, due to the circuitous nature of the plot and the fact that Salinger is not a particularly likeable protagonist.

There is a good plot in the novel and an ingenious solution but getting there is a real drag. The novel is told in the first person so the reader gets intimate with Salinger really quickly but that's more intimacy than I needed. He consciously lies to his wife, Annelise and blunders around upsetting almost everyone he comes into contact with. All with the aim of healing himself - he gets quite hysterical with fear about "the beast" which could be a creature from the deep or just a manifestation of his inner fears - without taking his prescribed medication. Selfishness is not an endearing characteristic.

As he stumbles around asking questions and snooping he gradually comes to a solution about what happened all those years ago on the mountain. It is certainly interesting but it takes so long to unfold I lost heart and got to the stage that I couldn't care less.

The Mountain is not a novel I enjoyed but I think readers who like a flawed, character driven novel will enjoy it as it is well done.