Cold Comfort, Quentin Bates
Cold Comfort, Quentin Bates
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Cold Comfort

Author: Quentin Bates

Narrator: Davina Porter

Unabridged: 12 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/01/2012

Synopsis

Officer Gunnhildur, recently promoted from her post in rural Iceland to Reykjav├¡k's Serious Crime Unit, is tasked with hunting down escaped convict Long Ommi, who has embarked on a spree of violent score-settling in and around the city. Meanwhile, she's also investigating the murder of a fitness guru in her own city-center apartment. As Gunna delves into the cases, she unearths some unwelcome secrets and influential friends shared by both guru and convict. Set in an Iceland plagued by an ongoing financial crisis, Gunna has to take stock of the whirlwind changes that have swept through the country—and the fact that at the highest levels of power, the system's endemic corruption still leads, inevitably, to murder.

About Quentin Bates

Quentin Bates lived in Iceland for ten years before moving back to the United Kingdom in 1990, where he became a full-time journalist at a commercial fishing magazine. He and his wife frequently return to Iceland, where they have many friends, including several in the Reykjavík police.

About Davina Porter

Davina Porter has been enthralling listeners for over twenty-five years with her ability to mine the psychological depths of the characters she reads and bring them convincingly to life. In 2006, she won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Female Narration and in 2004 for Best Inspirational Literature Narration. She has been honored as an AudioFile Golden Voice and has won nineteen AudioFile Earphones Awards. As an actress, she has appeared on stage at the Vineyard Playhouse and the Square One Theater, among others.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Belinda

3,75 sterren - Nederlandse paperback 🍒🍒🍒 Degelijk geschreven thriller met een vrouwelijke rechercheur. Het is wat traag hie een daar en er worden iets teveel haren in gespleten. Sterk is de guurheid en hardheid van de tijd in IJsland na de financiële banken ineenstorting. Mooi verweven in het verhaal......more

Goodreads review by Deb

Sergent Gunnhilder -- who was supposed to have been designated an Inspector with her move to Reykjavik's Serious Crime Unit -- has her hands full with the murder of a minor celebrity. The case becomes more convoluted the more she and her team learn about the victim's life. At the same time, a local......more

Goodreads review by Brenda

As noted in the case of proverbial excess (too many cooks in a kitchen), too many characters (specifically villains) can diminish the flavor of a finished product (in this case the mystery dish concocted by Quentin Bates). While I enjoyed sampling another novel set in a Nordic environment--and I app......more

Quotes

“In British author Bates’ solid follow-up to 2010’s Frozen Assets, Gunnhildur ‘Gunna’ Gísladóttir, now a sergeant with the Serious Crime Unit in Reykjavík, Iceland, looks into the murder of minor celebrity Svana Geirs, who hosted a TV fitness show and was intimately involved with various athletes and business figures…Bates, who lived ten years in Iceland…manages to engage the reader as Gunna explores the prominent men who knew Svana and deals with Magnùsson’s carnage.” Publishers Weekly

“Porter is undaunted by the names of local people and places and smoothly transitions between the many characters. The complex mystery is centered on what appears to be separate crimes: the murder of a beautiful woman and an escaped convict’s assaults on his former associates. Porter moves the dialogue along quickly as the skillful negotiations of Gunna and her team reveal that the case is not a simple murder and that its political overtones must be reckoned with.” AudioFile

“Twisty, complex, and dark.” Booklist

“More routine than Gunna’s debut, but still required reading for anyone who wants a sense of how calamitous Iceland’s meltdown was—and what just might be in store for American police procedurals next.” Kirkus Reviews

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