Sport fishermen while away the cruel Montreal winter by renting ice shacks on frozen lakes and fishing through a hole in the floor. ICE LAKE by John Farrow (Century) begins when a trapdoor is lifted and a corpse bobs up. It’s not a fisherman who’s lost his footing, but a man who’s come to the lake to pass on information to detective Emile Cinq-Mars about sinister activities at a Canadian pharmaceutical firm. Enter evil scientists, the Mob, and a native American activist who move the plot along at a satisfying clip.
After a drought of some years, when it was 400-page novels or nothing, the short story is back in fashion — and Frederick Forsyth‘s collection shows why this is a good thing. Stories in THE VETERAN (Bantam) display the same meticulous attention to detail as Forsyth’s novels, whether set in an auction house, a deserted convent in Siena or on an airplane flying from Bangkok to Heathrow — and his takes on revenge are versatile and rather fun.
The latest in the Jane Lawless series by Ellen Hart, MERCHANT OF VENUS (Women’s Press), is set in a country mansion, where Octavia, the sister of detective/chef Jane’s friend Cordelia has invited the pair to spend Christmas. Octavia is engaged to an octogenarian filmmaker who seems unlikely to survive long enough for the wedding — and not because he’s ailing.
A South African living in London, Natasha Mostert writes ghost stories for grown-ups. An earlier book centred on phone calls from the dead; in THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE (Hodder & Stoughton), Northern Province rock gongs feature strongly when three brilliant friends invent a computer game that will lead them to the music of the spheres, and plunge the world into chaos.
Forensic pathologist Temperance Brennan, investigating a plane crash site in North Carolina, is taken off the case after she stumbles across a deserted mansion and starts asking questions. FATAL VOYAGE (Heinemann) is Kathy Reichs‘s fourth thriller featuring Brennan who, like the author, just keeps getting better.