I like the way the story unfolded, throwing me for a loop a few times. People are comparing this to Nesbø. I am seeing a closer connection to Mankell’s Wallander, with a similarly rough around the edges detective and complex crime that reflects social issues of that time, dotted with geographic references one can follow. ( )

After reading City of Ice, I expected this to be good. Emile Cinq-Mars, the Montreal detective, is a fascinating character, and Farrow has made him a complete person and given him a wife who is a real character in the book, not just a foil, and a partner who has learned (in just two books!) how to fit in with Cinq-Mars series of moods. In this book, they're drawn into a sordid tale of Canadian drug companies experimenting illegally on AIDS victims in the United States in pursuit of a cure--no, actually in pursuit of big profits. But it's not a story about companies. It's a story about people, from idealistic to homicidal. And being Montreal, you can bet organized crime plays a part. In one of the quotes on the inside first page of the paperback, the Vancouver Sun says City of Ice "might be the best book ever produced in Canada." Well, Ice Lake is better. This is the type of deep detective novel that doesn't come along too often--Mark Smith's The Death of the Detective comes to mind--but that one is practically hallucinogenic, while everything in Ice Lake is so real you can touch it. As in City of Ice, the weather and the landscape play a big part in the story. And the way everything comes together at the end in this one is even more satisfying. To the author's eternal credit, he makes us an interested in Cinq-Mars personal life and struggles--his father is dying--as in how Cinq-Mars will find the solution to the crime. This is a MUST read. But read City of Ice first. ( )