Ice Lake

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.

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.

The setting and the character of Cinq-Mars make this a better-than-your-average detective-mystery series. Cinq-Mars, a bit larger than life, loves his city of Montreal, which makes me want to visit someday, even without the chance of meeting the curmudgeonly detective. The way the plot unfolds is different and interesting. Most of the characterizations are very good, with the exception of Camille, the reason why I gave this a 4 star rating. Read the book and decide for yourself - wouldn't want to give away anymore of the plot than the reader already gets in the first chapter!

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.