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constantreader471's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars
This was an interesting police procedural, set in Norway and Sweden. A body turns up in the garden of a shady lawyer and ex cop Vilhelm Thygesen. He calls the police and two Kripos DCIs, Vanja Vaage and Arve Stribolt. come to investigate. While more people die, the violence is not graphic and the two police inspectors work through clues painstakingly figuring out what happened. Since some of the bad guys are revealed early on, the mystery is how the two police inspectors solve the crime. I would call it a cerebral mystery. I thought that the translation was excellent.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me this book.
This was an interesting police procedural, set in Norway and Sweden. A body turns up in the garden of a shady lawyer and ex cop Vilhelm Thygesen. He calls the police and two Kripos DCIs, Vanja Vaage and Arve Stribolt. come to investigate. While more people die, the violence is not graphic and the two police inspectors work through clues painstakingly figuring out what happened. Since some of the bad guys are revealed early on, the mystery is how the two police inspectors solve the crime. I would call it a cerebral mystery. I thought that the translation was excellent.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me this book.
mollywolfie's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
clairereviews's review against another edition
2.0
Review: The Frozen Woman by Jon Michelet Publisher: No Exit Press (21st Sept 2017)
ISBN-13: 978-1843442929Source: Real ReadersRating: 2*
Synopsis:
In the depths of the Norwegian winter, a woman s frozen corpse is discovered in the garden of a notorious ex-lawyer, Vilhelm Thygesen. She has been stabbed to death.
A young biker, a member of a gang once represented by the lawyer, is found dead in suspicious circumstances.
Thygesen starts receiving anonymous threats, and becomes ensnared in a web of violence, crime and blackmail that spreads across Northern Europe.
Does the frozen woman hold the key?
Review:
I have lost count of the number of times I have picked up The Frozen Woman over the past several weeks. Usually, I really enjoy nordic crime thrillers, and this has twice won Norway's best crime novel, so there is no reason that I should not thoroughly enjoy it. I just could not get into it. At my last attempt, I got about 40% in, and then just completely lost interest again. I persevered more than I normally would if I had bought the book rather than had been given it to review, but alas, it was not for me. Thank you to the nudge team for providing a copy for me to review via Real Readers.
ISBN-13: 978-1843442929Source: Real ReadersRating: 2*
Synopsis:
In the depths of the Norwegian winter, a woman s frozen corpse is discovered in the garden of a notorious ex-lawyer, Vilhelm Thygesen. She has been stabbed to death.
A young biker, a member of a gang once represented by the lawyer, is found dead in suspicious circumstances.
Thygesen starts receiving anonymous threats, and becomes ensnared in a web of violence, crime and blackmail that spreads across Northern Europe.
Does the frozen woman hold the key?
Review:
I have lost count of the number of times I have picked up The Frozen Woman over the past several weeks. Usually, I really enjoy nordic crime thrillers, and this has twice won Norway's best crime novel, so there is no reason that I should not thoroughly enjoy it. I just could not get into it. At my last attempt, I got about 40% in, and then just completely lost interest again. I persevered more than I normally would if I had bought the book rather than had been given it to review, but alas, it was not for me. Thank you to the nudge team for providing a copy for me to review via Real Readers.
b00knerd's review against another edition
1.0
I really tried with this book but i couldn't relate to the characters nor get their names in my head correct to understand what the heck was going on. I gave up early on.
aly36's review against another edition
3.0
A body! That's how it starts a frozen body in a garden. I was intrigued! The cover of this book remind me of the "Encino Man" movie. This book feels like it was translated from a different language and the book had it's good moments, the story started great for me. But I was a little lost in the middle of the book. I just lost interest in finding out what would happen next and I'm not sure if it was because I feel like the translation part of the book is not coming through to me or not. I think this author is very skilled at writing a great thriller but I didn't get it in this book. This book in the end did not catch me as much as the cover did. * I received this book from Netgalley and this is my honest review*
yetanothersusan's review against another edition
3.0
I would say this is a good story lost in translation and cultural differences. A young woman in found dead and frozen in a man's yard and the Norwegian police try to find her killer. Interspersed with the actual detective work are random discussions regarding things that have no bearing on the case or the characters in the book. This, along with a translation that resulted in some ungainly sentences, made the story somewhat difficult to follow. On the other hand, some characters and situations weren't fully explained. Perhaps this is another victim of cultural differences? All that aside, it was an interesting and well thought out concept, it just suffered in presentation.
A copy of this book was provided by NetGalley and Old Castle Books in exchange for an honest review.
A copy of this book was provided by NetGalley and Old Castle Books in exchange for an honest review.
bibliophilebookclub's review
1.0
I'm having no luck! It's not often I DNF a book, but I just could not connect with The Frozen Woman at all. And I usually love my Scandinavian crime fiction, but for some reason this one did not hit the mark for me.
karlou's review against another edition
5.0
As soon as I read the plot for The Frozen Woman I knew it was a book I wanted to read, I'm a huge fan of Nordic Noir so how could I resist a book written by a two time winner of Norway's best crime novel? Originally published in Norway in 2001, The Frozen Woman is a prescient thriller that foreshadows the ongoing issues surrounding immigration and people smuggling across Europe.
A frozen corpse is found in the garden of an ageing left-wing lawyer. Vilhelm Thygesen has a murky past, and the animosity between him and the police is mutual. He is the obvious suspect, particularly as his tenant, Vera Alam is away - allegedly overseas. However, it transpires that she is still alive and undergoing treatment for cancer so Stribolt and Vaage, the investigating officers from Kripos, are forced to concede he may be innocent and they must look elsewhere for a suspect. This proves difficult when they don't know who the woman was. As Vaage notes,
"Three to four hundred women from countries outside the Schengen Area are killed every year in Europe. Interpol never finds out who many of them are and hardly anyone is ever caught for these crimes."
Meanwhile a young biker has been killed after crashing his bike. It looks at first to be a tragic accident but soon becomes apparent that his death is rather more suspicious. He was a member of a biker gang, the Seven Samurais and seemed to know something about the murdered young woman, who has been named Picea after the Latin word for spruce. His death may be connected with his attempts to blackmail a hitherto scandal-free industrialist, Gerry Ryland. Just what does Ryland know about Picea?
At 253 pages this is a fairly short novel, yet because of the attention to detail it actually feels much longer, the action switches between the characters seemingly at random and for a while it's hard to see just how everything fits together. Jon Michelet never shies away from interrupting the plot for what at first seems a meaningless diversion - fungi disease in pine trees, potential corporate mergers and professional reputations, the deadly intentions and mistrust between the gang members of the Seven Samurai - but eventually it all makes sense. This rather fragmented unfolding of the story could have been frustrating but I found I loved reading something that really demanded my full attention. There's a dry humour to The Frozen Woman too, particularly in the exchanges between Stribolt and Vaage, colleagues who have a working relationship that is akin to that between siblings, spiky and competitive yet the teasing clearly an indication of their mutual respect and closeness. Thygesen is a fascinating catalyst to the plot, his past suggests he has a questionable relationship with the truth and with staying on the right side of the law, yet his wry exchanges with Vaage in particular show him to be undeniably charming, intelligent and erudite.
The Frozen Woman isn't a book I'd describe as a gripping thriller, instead this police procedural is a biting social commentary that shines a light on organised and gang crimes, the stigmatising of ethnic groups, the exploitation of some of society's most vulnerable and the difficulties in identifying the dispossessed. It may have originally been written almost twenty years ago but remains achingly current.
"And then there are all the children. They'll be gone, scattered like chaff before the wind, blown into ditches, swept into landfill dumps, brushed into the gutters of the Boulevarde de Stalingrad in Paris, disfigured in a backyard in Berlin, shot in a shed in Skopje."
This is a classy, thoughtful novel that deserved to be savoured. I loved it.
A frozen corpse is found in the garden of an ageing left-wing lawyer. Vilhelm Thygesen has a murky past, and the animosity between him and the police is mutual. He is the obvious suspect, particularly as his tenant, Vera Alam is away - allegedly overseas. However, it transpires that she is still alive and undergoing treatment for cancer so Stribolt and Vaage, the investigating officers from Kripos, are forced to concede he may be innocent and they must look elsewhere for a suspect. This proves difficult when they don't know who the woman was. As Vaage notes,
"Three to four hundred women from countries outside the Schengen Area are killed every year in Europe. Interpol never finds out who many of them are and hardly anyone is ever caught for these crimes."
Meanwhile a young biker has been killed after crashing his bike. It looks at first to be a tragic accident but soon becomes apparent that his death is rather more suspicious. He was a member of a biker gang, the Seven Samurais and seemed to know something about the murdered young woman, who has been named Picea after the Latin word for spruce. His death may be connected with his attempts to blackmail a hitherto scandal-free industrialist, Gerry Ryland. Just what does Ryland know about Picea?
At 253 pages this is a fairly short novel, yet because of the attention to detail it actually feels much longer, the action switches between the characters seemingly at random and for a while it's hard to see just how everything fits together. Jon Michelet never shies away from interrupting the plot for what at first seems a meaningless diversion - fungi disease in pine trees, potential corporate mergers and professional reputations, the deadly intentions and mistrust between the gang members of the Seven Samurai - but eventually it all makes sense. This rather fragmented unfolding of the story could have been frustrating but I found I loved reading something that really demanded my full attention. There's a dry humour to The Frozen Woman too, particularly in the exchanges between Stribolt and Vaage, colleagues who have a working relationship that is akin to that between siblings, spiky and competitive yet the teasing clearly an indication of their mutual respect and closeness. Thygesen is a fascinating catalyst to the plot, his past suggests he has a questionable relationship with the truth and with staying on the right side of the law, yet his wry exchanges with Vaage in particular show him to be undeniably charming, intelligent and erudite.
The Frozen Woman isn't a book I'd describe as a gripping thriller, instead this police procedural is a biting social commentary that shines a light on organised and gang crimes, the stigmatising of ethnic groups, the exploitation of some of society's most vulnerable and the difficulties in identifying the dispossessed. It may have originally been written almost twenty years ago but remains achingly current.
"And then there are all the children. They'll be gone, scattered like chaff before the wind, blown into ditches, swept into landfill dumps, brushed into the gutters of the Boulevarde de Stalingrad in Paris, disfigured in a backyard in Berlin, shot in a shed in Skopje."
This is a classy, thoughtful novel that deserved to be savoured. I loved it.
keeperofpages's review against another edition
DNF - I really struggled to get into this one and sadly, I have no desire to continue reading it - I tried several times to continue with the read but each time it felt forced and I put the novel down again. To me, it just didn’t have that fluidity or atmosphere Nordic Noir usually carries. However, I think the cover is amazing!
I’m thankful to the publisher for my copy via Netgalley. Unfortunately, not every book can be for everyone and this one just wasn’t for me.
I’m thankful to the publisher for my copy via Netgalley. Unfortunately, not every book can be for everyone and this one just wasn’t for me.
lisabee's review against another edition
4.0
First off, the translator could have done a better job. There were some odd word choices. Second - if you are a native English speaker, as in you don't come from Scandinavia, this will be an adventure in cultural difference. Come with an open mind, and leave your politics at the door. Third, I found it wonderfully believable and deeply sad, so I expect that if you don't do sad, you won't like it.
But I really enjoyed it - in a "Sons of Anarchy" meets Elizabeth Warren kind of way.
But I really enjoyed it - in a "Sons of Anarchy" meets Elizabeth Warren kind of way.