Review: "The Dyatlov Pass Mystery" by Cédric Mayen and González Jandro

The Dyatlov Pass Mystery by Cédric Mayen and González Jandro
Translated from the French by James Hogan
English edition published December 2023 via Europe Comics
★★★★

The Dyatlov Pass mystery is one that has fascinated me since I first read about it in 2016. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that the story has been turned into a graphic novel, or that it's been translated into English—I was fully prepared to struggle through the French if need be, and the state of my French is dire, so it's a delight that this is available in English.

The basic gist is this: in January of 1959, ten hikers set out into the remote wilderness of Russia for a multi-day hike. They were experienced trekkers, and this hike would qualify them for the highest ranking of hiker, so to speak. One had to turn back early due to chronic pain—and he would be the only survivor.

When searchers eventually located the bodies, strewn in and near the woods close to their tent, it was clear enough how the hikers had died: some from hypothermia, some from catastrophic injuries. What was less clear was why they had died. Why did they erect their tent on an open slope instead of in the protection of the trees—and what had compelled these experienced, competent hikers to leave the tent in the middle of the night in a perilously cold winter night?

In The Dyatlov Pass Mystery, Mayen and Jandro set out to tell a fictionalized version of the story. There are two time lines at play—one, the time line of Ivanov, the prosecutor tasked with finding out what happened (and where the last of the bodies were); two, the hikers themselves as they set out on their ill-fated expedition. The case is well documented, as (among other things) the hikers kept detailed diaries and took photographs, although not all of the material has been made public (because USSR). Theories also run the gamut from the prosaic to the, well, highly unrealistic, and here it's up to Comrade Ivanov to decide how much credence to give to some of the more outlandish theories. Did someone find them out in the wilderness and attack them? Did they think an avalanche was coming? Had the men fought over the two women in the group? Or was it some sort of missile—or aliens?

This is a fictionalized version of the story, a sequence of events that could have happened based on the information at hand (and with a fair amount of elaboration, especially when it comes to dialogue and backstories) but not claiming to have all the answers. The art is strong—not my favorite style, but gets the job done and then some—and was the deciding factor in this being a four-star rather than a three-star read for me. Sometimes I think the story plays up the Drama in unnecessary ways, but it's pretty restrained, all things considered.

Where most of my questions came were at the end. I won't get into how Mayen and Jandro end the final section from the perspective of the hikers except to say that I don't think the last panels represent the most realistic portrayal. But...there's also a "dossier" at the end that goes into more of the research that has been done into the case, including interviews with some of the people who have investigated it in more recent years. What's so odd to me is that when Mayen interviews Johan Gaume, who did some mathematical modeling about the case that made big news a couple of years ago, he says to Gaume that "you uncovered what drove the mountaineers to flee their tent" (p. ~106*). Why they left the tent has always been the biggest question (other things, like "what happened to so-and-so's tongue", are very easily explained by things like months of decomposition and animal activity before all the bodies were found), and I fully agree that Gaume's findings have led to the most logical conclusions to date. But...they're not the conclusions that Mayen and Jandro focus on, or really portray, in the book. Rather, he plays up the possibility of something unlikely in the story itself—and in the dossier he gives a lot of credence to the people who run dyatlovpass dot com, which is a mine of information but very chaotic, and who wrote a nearly incoherent book on the subject. It leaves me wondering why the story doesn't lean in more to Gaume's research, and why the list of sources includes (among other media) only two books.

All that said: while I don't recommend this as one's sole source of information about the Dyatlov Pass incident—it's fiction, after all, and besides which quite literally every book, fiction and nonfiction, that I have read on the subject draws a different conclusion about what happened—it makes for an excellent story. I will be hanging on to this to reread.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.