Ice Lake: A Novel - Softcover

Farrow, John

3.47

267 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812992644 ISBN 13: 9780812992649

Publisher: Random House, 2001

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A woman discovers a frozen corpse under the ice in her fishing shack—coincidentally, on the same lake where Detective Cinq-Mars is enjoying an afternoon of ice fishing with his partner just a few shacks away.

In this keenly intelligent, strikingly original new novel of suspense John Farrow once again creates a colorful, convincing tableau replete with criminals, cops, corrupt scientists, and dogged activists, all caught up in an intriguing and deadly battle between two big pharmaceutical companies on the trail of an AIDS vaccine. Lured into the fray by an anonymous phone call as deaths begin to mount all over the East Coast, Cinq-Mars must call upon all of his resources to crack the case before he himself becomes its next victim. Gripping, starkly realistic, and tantalizingly complex, Ice Lake astonishes with its deft, assured plotting, fully realized characters, and bone-chilling suspense. With this second thriller John Farrow joins the likes of Michael Connelly and Kathy Reichs as one of the most compelling voices in sophisticated crime fiction.
From the Hardcover edition.

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Review:

As 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 �mile 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 Frutkin

About the Author:

John Farrow is a pseudonym for a highly respected Canadian writer of literary fiction. Ice Lake is his second thriller and his second book to be published in the United States. Farrow lives near Montreal.
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