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.

From Booklist
"I'm fighting against death, and how crazy is that?" It's a battle that even Emile Cinq-Mars, star detective of the Montreal police, can't win, whether the grim reaper has set his sights on Cinq-Mars' own father, on 42 AIDS victims who were fed drugs designed to hasten the effects of the disease, or on a growing number of people caught in the cover-up surrounding the drug scam. Canadian novelist Farrow follows his superb first mystery, City of Ice (1999), with an equally outstanding second effort in what now must now be recognized as one of the best series in crime fiction. Following the trail of a corpse found submerged in an ice-fishing hole, the mercurial Cinq-Mars--a fascinating combination of Inspector Morse and Charlie Resnick, the laser-like intelligence and hauteur of the former mixed with the compassion and procedural know-how of the latter--unravels a truly horrendous scheme orchestrated by the greedy CEO of a drug research company and his psychotic lover. Their plan to gather (and then sell) groundbreaking data on the AIDS virus is unknowingly carried out by a Native American researcher who distributes the lethal drug cocktail, convinced that she is saving lives not ending them. As in City of Ice, Farrow combines a marvelously detailed, brilliantly structured plot with a multifaceted, extremely moving human drama in which Cinq-Mars, "who carried with him a sense of the world's need for redemption," again finds himself forced to act on his own, "answering to the angels and the saints, whether or not they watched or cared." Inevitably, Cinq-Mars solves the case but loses the battle with death, his father's passing at the end of the novel a reminder that lives can be saved only temporarily. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

SYNOPSIS

A woman discovers a frozen corpse under the ice in her fishing shack￯﾿ﾽcoincidentally, on the same lake where Detective Cinq-Mars is enjoying an afternoon of ice fishing with his partner just a few shacks away.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews