Ice Lake

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Brilliant, unorthodox Montreal detective Emile Cinq Mars has a complex case on his hands when a corpse with a bullet in its neck is found floating in a fishing hole cut into the ice of a frozen lake. The victim had shadowy connections with the pharmaceutical industry, but that's just the start.Amazon.com ReviewAs John Farrow's Ice Lake opens, a corpse, shot through the neck, is found under the ice in a fishing hut on a frozen lake near Montreal. It's the dead of winter in a region that Farrow (a pseudonym for literary author Trevor Ferguson, whose critically acclaimed novels include The Fire Line) knows like the back of his hand: its back alleys and distant suburbs, its ethnic diversity and big city evil, the long black nights and searingly bright days of its unrelenting winters. He also reveals intimate knowledge of the diverse power groups that drive the novel's plot: the biker gangs, the Mohawk Warriors, the Mob, the bigwigs in the lucrative pharmaceutical industry looking to cash in on an AIDS cure, the various police forces with their petty animosities and territorial conflicts.Since the advent of Sherlock Holmes, though, most detective thrillers stand or fall on the qualities of their lead character. In Detective Émile Cinq-Mars (whom he introduced in the bestselling City of Ice), Ferguson has created a man of genuine emotions, highly ethical yet thoroughly practical, an old-style, straight-ahead cop. He doesn't leap tall buildings (or frozen lakes) in a single bound, but he knows how to keep digging in his own dogged style. A likable lead detective, a wintry ice maze of a plot, and a supporting cast of characters some of whom are patently vicious and others satisfyingly complex all make Ice Lake a captivating thriller. --Mark FrutkinFrom Publishers WeeklyA taut and gripping mystery is on offer in Farrow's quietly powerful follow-up to City of Ice, but only once the reader gets past the jarring reverse flashbacks in the first two chapters. The opening few pages contain an information-packed summation of the novel's plot: two New York City cops have come to Montreal to consult with Det. Sgt. mile Cinq-Mars and his partner Bill Mathers about suspicious AIDS deaths in Manhattan, which have been linked to two Montreal women known only as Saint Lucy and Camille. The story then backtracks three days to the discovery of a dead body under the ice at the Lake of Two Mountains, northwest of Montreal; when it backtracks again to December of the previous year, we learn who the dead body is, and how and why he got there. Once everything becomes chronological, the novel turns into a Hitchcockian tale of betrayal and competing interests, where the audience sees more than any of the individual characters do, and suspense is generated by knowing who the bad guys are and watching as the good guys are gulled (or killed) by them. Canadian author Farrow's style is very low-key and quiet, but it creates a kind of cold stillness in which every revelation echoes for miles; a stillness resides in Cinq-Mars, too, whose experience of human behavior gives him insight into the actions of everyone from Mohawk Indians to his dying father. In the end, it's the characters, not the mystery, despite its clever twists and turns, that carries Farrow's tale. Agent, Anne McDermid. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.