Frozen Out
Quentin Bates




 
I just finished this, first in a series of Iceland-set Detective stories featuring Sergeant Gunnhildur (Gunna) Gisladottir of the Hvalvik Police, Hvalvik being a small rural station, a fishing port with only a couple of officers. But their calm routine, issuing speeding or parking tickets and arresting the occasional drunk or clumsy burglar, is shaken when the body of a young man is found in the cold waters of their Harbour. With a very high alcohol level in his system and no signs of physical injuries, it looks like a case of accidental death by drowning, or perhaps, at the outside, suicide. But  Gunna – who had started her police career in Reykjavik, before her children were born – isn't satisfied with that. And like a dog with a bone she worries at the case, incurring the wrath of her Regional Commander and his superiors.
 
     Gunna is a warm-hearted, gutsy officer and mother, recently widowed and well-rounded, both as a character and a person. High protein diets are needed to withstand the chill of this icy island and in a small community where policing involves driving the best, or the second-best Volvo or sitting at a desk in a building shared with the Post Office, Gunna carries her own insulation around with her.
     Connections to Icelandic Politics, Financial Corruption, shoddy Business Ethics and other deaths, at first filed as accidental, or natural causes, find themselves under the microscope. The tension mounts as the net begins to take in establishment figures who have believed themselves above the law.
     A contemporary thriller which is set at that breaking point for the Icelandic economy which saw the collapse and nationalisation of the Banking System,  includes Environmental issues and concerns with 'Clean Iceland' campaigners protesting against Aluminium exploitation which threatens the ecological balance and is calculated to fill the pockets of those able to steer the Financial Markets to their own benefit.
     A good read, once you get the hang of the unique Naming System, which contains only a few Surnames (of the eccentric or pretentious individuals who want to stand out) where everyone is their father, or mother's -son or -dottir which is explained in the narrative. This is one for any reader interested in Police Procedurals, as the reader is given the identity of the killer and his clients long before he is identified by Gunna and her team.
     And the race is on, through the seamier side of Icelandic society – Reykjavik's flesh-pots, the exploitation of foreign sex workers, drug traffickers and home-grown sleaze-balls.
     I'll be opening #2 very shortly, After a volume of Peter Robinson's short stories.