Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1623838 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-10
• Released on: 2001-07-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.com 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 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 Frutkin

From Publishers Weekly
A 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.

From Library Journal
Farrow (City of Ice) strikes the right note from the start of this whodunit, which begins with the discovery of a frozen body in the ice under a fishing hut on a lake northwest of Montreal. Complications multiply when Sergeant-Detective mile Cinq-Mars, who debuted in the author's previous thriller and who stands straight as a mainmast, is maneuvered into tracking down the murderer. In unfolding the story, and long before the climactic episode is reached, Farrow takes his readers from one dramatic crisis to another, spinning a tale that involves rival pharmaceutical companies seeking to be the first to find a cure for AIDS and a bumper crop of amoral characters. In the first part of the book, the rapid shift of focus makes demands on the reader's concentration, but once the characters and forces are clear, each new scene contributes to the whole. Armchair detectives who delight in spotting clues and following verbal deductions will appreciate this effort. A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Important Canadian Literary Thriller ----
Born and bred on the shores of Montreal, I cannot but feel the "draw" of these two beautiful "thrillers" so incredibly placed, and most certainly, incredibly characterized. What more is it that we are all to be looking for? As a former female English-Quebec-Canadian, and now a most integrated Chicagoan native, I have become to feel myself sadly alienated and foreign to all that goes on in that incredible "City of Ice". Who is John Farrow--OR--Trevor Ferguson that he may tantalize us such, and bring us home with this wonderful character that he has created. Can he! or does he exist !? - Cinq-Mars. I must tell you, that he is in my heart.

Pleasing Cold
I really enjoyed "Ice Lake" by John Farrow (pen name of Canadian literary writer). The main detective charged with solving an initially uncomplicated murder case, is the complex and dedicated Emile Cinq-Mars, who is a legendary Montreal city detective. But as the case unfolds, using a kind of reverse flashback technique, it becomes much more complicated. Farrow draws the reader into a world of shady pharmaceutical companies, Montreal organized crime, and Indian activists. His characters, for the most part, are well-developed and one understands the reasons behind their good and bad actions.
Farrow is especially good at setting descriptions and moods. His paints a very good potrait of the stillness of frozen fishing lakes, the chaos of inner city Montreal and the peace of Cinq-Mar's rural horse farm. Farrow's descriptive phrases keep one turning the pages as much as the rapid fire dialogue that keeps the plot humming along nicely. This is a good detective thriller.

Saint Lucy, dupe or conspirator?
The ice-ridden locale is ideal for the cold hearts at play here. The lake is a frozen wasteland where danger and confusion, snow and ice, compete in masking and unmasking and masking again a criminal conspiracy that is tundra vast. What we don't know is this: Saint Lucy, dupe or conspirator?

Lucy's lover and partner in crime is found dead underneath an ice hole in a fishing shack on the lake, (but who is he, really?). Nefarious Québécois mobsters, police from competing jurisdictions, industrial spies, a femme fatale in Camille Choquette, who makes Lizzie Borden look a sweetheart, all skate in biotech espionage, psychopathic murder, Indian Warrior politics, crime syndicates, and the coldest hearted capitalism.

Ice Lake, by respected Canadian novelist Trevor Ferguson writing as John Farrow, follows City of Ice, which introduced the brilliant and charming, moody and maddening police detective Emil Cinq-Mars, a maverick in the Montreal PD, whose heart harkens back to an earlier time in the city's rough past when vice ruled and cops broke heads.