The Frozen Dead by Bernard Minier
The corpse of a horse is discovered
on a mountaintop arranged in a very strange way. The only way to access the scaffold the horse
is placed on is by cable car, but neither of the guards on duty at the water
power plant owning the cable car heard it move.
Since the horse was a favorite of a very wealthy and prominent
businessman law enforcement is forced to drop their other cases to work on this
one. A few days after the horse incident
a man is found murdered in a way reminiscent of the animal. Could the two be connected? Will there by more?
Commandant Martin Servaz is a
sympathetic and smart man, very well drawn and likeable, as is the rest of his
unit – you really want them to solve the case and hope that they all stay
safe. There is also a storyline about an
insane asylum for the criminally insane, the patients no other place wants, or
can, hold and again the characters there are also well developed and as you
read you keep wondering how it all ties together.
This is a great read for these cold
snowy nights but there is no need to be concerned because this book is set in
the French Pyrenees far from us and if the criminally insane (think Hannibal
Lecter types) were to escape from their escape-proof asylum they would not be
able to make it to us. This is a suspenseful
well-constructed read that was wonderful on audiobook.
