Good plot ( )

At the heart of Freeze Frame is an intriguing mystery, the solution to which is slowly and cleverly revealed. Although there’s very little fast action in the novel, the reader is pulled through the story by a desire to unravel the puzzle of Adam Killian’s death and the strange clues he left to identify his killer; it makes the book hard to put down. The final twist is totally credible and beautifully executed.

The book opens with scenes of a man on the run from mysterious hunters years before. He is forced to leave family behind without even a goodbye, and to and change his identity several times as he recreates himself in another country. It’s not until three quarters of the way through the rest of the novel that we realise who he is and why he was on the run.

Enzo Macleod is hired to solve the cold case mystery of Killian’s murder. The big question is why someone would shoot him when everyone knew he only had weeks left before he would die from lung cancer. Slowly, Macleod learns about everyone on the island, including the man who had been charged and acquitted at the time of the murder.

The clues gradually give up their messages, and Macleod starts to dig into the history of one particular islander.

Freeze Frame is a cleverly constructed story with a powerful and totally believable final twist. It’s an intriguing whodunit that spans several decades. ( )

My husband gave me this book 2 years ago for my birthday because I really liked Peter May's Lewis Man trilogy. He didn't realize this was the fourth book in a series when he bought it but he agreed with me that I should probably read the previous books before I delved into this one. So that's why it has taken me 2 years to get to reading this birthday gift but I am glad I did because I know lots more about the main character, Enzo Macleod, than was covered in this book and it's those little details that add to the pleasure of reading a series.

Enzo is off to an island in the Bay of Biscay off the coast of Brittany to try to solve another cold case from a book written by a journalist. This case is pretty cold as it occurred twenty years ago. However, since the victim urged his son's wife just before he was shot to leave his study just as it was until his son could get home from Africa and solve the clues, nothing has been touched because the son was accidentally killed in Africa just after his father was murdered. The victim was an amateur entomologist; we know from the beginning of the book that he obtained a sample of blood from the person he thought would kill him by having a mosquito bite the killer and then the mosquito was smashed on the pages of a book. Will Enzo find that clue and decipher all the rest or will he get sidetracked by the man everyone on the island thinks committed the murder? I had to keep reading in order to find out. Enzo is also contending with some women problems. His on and off Paris girlfriend wants to talk to him and the daughter-in-law of the murder victim is giving him unmistakeable hints that she would like to join him in bed. Wherever Enzo goes he seems to find lovely and smart women wanting to sleep with him. Quelle probleme! ( )

Another very readable and puzzling cold case taken on by Enzo Macleod. Who killed an Englishman on a small island off of Brittany 20 years before, and why? A man has been acquitted, but the clannish villagers still believe he did it. It's up to Enzo to find the killer and the motive. He does not believe the original suspect did it. The victim was an amateur etymologist, who left enigmatic clues for his son--to what? Or whom? The son has passed away. Very clever mystery and fascinating detective and forensic work. The author is one of my favorite mystery writers.

Highly recommended. ( )

I have read numbers 1, 3 and now 4 in this series. This one had a fantastic ending with an unexpected twist that raised it to nearly the same level as the other two I read. The only negative was that the first 3/4 of the book was a bit slow paced and there was a lot of time when nothing much happened, partly because Enzo was on a wild goose chase at first and it wasn't until the last 25% of the book when he finally got on the right track. The pace picked up then with an exciting ending, worth reading even though the pace and suspense didn't really arrive until later in the book. ( )