Frozen Out

Gunnhilder known as Gunna the cop is the head of a two person police force in a small town about an hour from Reykjavik, Iceland. A body is fished out of the waters in her town and while it seems that he fell into the water after over imbibing . Gunna is being pressed by her superiors in Reykjavik to accept this scenario but she feels that unless he had wings there was no way from him to have travelled to her locality on foot. Murder, then is what she begins to investigate getting resistance from everyone she interviews as well as her boss.

Gunna has two children and lost her husband several years before in an incident she refuses to discuss. She is no push over. When a second man is found dead she moves into higher gear and begins to realize that she is on the trail of a cunning cold-blooded killer.

Despite the fact that the murderer is elusive and crafty she is soon on his trail a and the authorities are forced to fall in behind her even though what she is really following is also a trail to high level corruption.

The book is billed as a thrilled. I found it to be a leisurely walk that begins to pick up pace toward the end of the story. I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading COLD COMFORT the next in the series. ( )

As I recall the first book I've read set in Iceland, certainly the best. The author is British but spent ten years in Iceland and is married to an Icelander so seems to have captured an accurate picture of life there and the political dynamics. The story revolves around a dogged female police sergeant, determined to get to the bottom of a suspicious death on her patch, despite high-level political interference. A sub-plot revolves around the controversial building of an aluminium smelter and associated hydro-electric scheme, as well as the crisis which hit Iceland's banks. Recommended. ( )

This is the first in the series about Gunnhildur Gislasdottir, a woman police officer in Iceland. It's the second I read, but I am considerably more enthusiastic about the series after reading number one. It's not that it is a better novel -- both are involving police procedurals -- but that the central character and the setting get more appealing with more exposure. And the setting is fascinating -- Iceland during and just after the financial collapse, which hit the country harder than almost any other. The third is available in English; I'm waiting for it to show up on kindle, because that's all I can read these days. ( )

Motherly, obstinate, clever and a bit rude Quentin Bates' Officer Gunnhildur is a welcome addition to the International mystery scene.


The first title in the Officer Gunnhildur series, Frozen Assets is a police procedural set in a backwater fishing village in Iceland. When a body is found floating in Hvalvik harbor it's the biggest event the police have dealt with since directing traffic at the construction site of the new aluminum smelter. Gunna's convinced the death is suspicious even though the blood alcohol level points to accidental drowning and she's determined to get at the truth. Her boss doesn't agree, obstructing the investigation at every opportunity. His main goal, to transfer Gunna anywhere else and as quickly as possible. Gunna's committing professional suicide if she's wrong but she's tenacious pulling at threads that reveal dangerous connections between the most successful businesses in Reykjavik and officials at the highest levels of government. Unusual revelations in the media also point to political corruption, inept bankers and a group of enviromental activists - spurring on the investigation. In a small country where the local taxi driver is your cousin and everyone knows your favorite lunch spot Gunna can observe what is out of place to solve a crime that will rock the financial stability of an entire country. - Recommended http://www.murdermysterymayhembooks.com ( )

First Line: Water gurgled between the piles of the dock and the car's tyres juddered over the heavy timbers.

It's an open-and-shut case: the young man was drunk, stumbled off the dock late at night, and drowned. But Police Sergeant Gunnhildur wonders why on earth he'd get drunk in Reykjavik and then drive a hundred miles to fall into the harbor in her town and drown? Resources are tight, and although she's advised to stop looking into this death, Gunnhildur is nothing if not stubborn. The further she digs, the more she finds-- and the information and clues are leading all the way to Iceland's business and banking communities.

While Gunnhildur and her team investigate, a rookie crime journalist attaches himself to her in an attempt to get a scoop, and everyone in the country is wondering who's dishing all the dirt at Skandalblogger.com. When a second murder occurs, Gunnhildur knows she and her team must move even faster to catch a very wily killer.

Bates makes the landscape and weather of Iceland a brooding character in Frozen Assets. The economy, which worsens daily, highlights Iceland's precarious situation as a small country with very limited resources.

The secondary characters (with the exception of two spoiled rich sisters) are a bit two-dimensional, but the two main characters certainly aren't. The killer is ruthless and very, very smart if a bit arrogant. Having heard Officer Gunnhildur referred to as "the fat policewoman" once, he continues to dismiss her as such-- even when he discovers that she's more than a match for him.

Gunna is the single mother of two children. Her thirteen-year-old daughter is still in school while her nineteen-year-old son is working as a deckhand on a fishing boat. The reader knows that she's a bit out of the ordinary right from the start when she insists that the young man's death is not a case of accidental drowning, and then when the case is given to another policeman who wants to pin the death on his favorite suspect. As soon as she sees which way the wind is blowing, she refuses to have any part in it.

When Gunna knows she's right, she will not back down, regardless of whose face she has to get into, what she has to say, or how many hours she has to work. She's good at thinking on her feet, and she does an excellent job of running the investigation and keeping everyone focused and looking in the right directions. The best part of this book was watching the battle of wits between Gunna and the killer.

If there was any one thing that disappointed me in reading this book, it was that I found the tone to be curiously dispassionate. I found it difficult to become fully engaged in the story. That is a minor quibble however, as there is plenty to like in Frozen Assets. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Officer Gunnhildur, and I won't have to wait long. The second book in the series, Cold Comfort, just became available. ( )