Frozen Assets

Gunna Gunnhildur has been rudely awoken early in the morning by the phone.  The caller tells her that there is a body on the beach.  It’s not a good day for her to be shadowed by a young journalist from Reykjavik.  Skuli appears as she is having lunch.

Gunna has to go into Reykjavik to get a firm identity on the victim.  It seems that he was supposed to have been on his way to Denmark for a meeting on the evening when he drowned.  His major project was a new aluminium smelter being constructed in town.  Gunna is able to get more information about the victim from his ex-girlfriend.

Gunna manages to expand her town’s police force by one when Snorri Hilmarsson is added.  She is sure that the victim is a murder victim.  How could a man who had so much alcohol in his system have gotten a hundred kilometres from Reykjavik otherwise?  She requests another police officer, and gets Saevaldur Bogason.  She isn’t as pleased with him as she was with getting Snorri.

It doesn’t take Saevaldur long to get an arrest, however Gunna is sure that he has the wrong man.  She also wants to check out the hit and run, which killed the good friend of the victim earlier.  Are the deaths connected?

Some time later Gunna is told to drop the investigation.  Reykjavik will look after it.  She is to investigate the fires set at the aluminium plant construction site.  However, things change when a blogger disclosed information about the case.  How did the blogger, who is very difficult to find, get the information?  Suddenly, Gunna has more people added to her investigative team.

Surprisingly, it is Skuli who provides a new lead.  The photographer for his newspaper has a series of photographs, which show a man who is a suspect in the killing.  By connecting with European police forces, they are able to identify him as Norwegian.  Now to find him.

Author Quentin Bates has created an unusually wily opponent for Gunna.  His plot twists are unpredictable, creating a challenge for Gunna.  In addition to the search for the killer, Bates has a side plot going on related to the economic crisis that Iceland had been going through at the time.  Quite a good read.  I will be looking forward to reading the sequels.