Book Review: Frozen

Reviewed By: Webspinner - RAM

Frozen     Amazon US PB Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada PB
Richard Burke
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Amateur Sleuth
Orion Books, UK

"Why did Verity end up drooling at the walls in a hospital, with the nurses occasionally spinning her beloved zoetrope, and she herself blank and saying nothing? Why did I lose her all those years ago, and why have I lost her again now?" -- RB

Harry's childhood friend, Verity, fell from a cliff near Beachy Head on the day she was to have met him at a local pub. She survived the fall, in theory, but is now condemned to unconsciousness forever. WHY haunts Harry, to the exclusion of all else. Together with his only other childhood friend, Adam, and Verity's partner, Sam, he determines to find out if and why Verity tried to take her own life that day. In doing so, he is forced to relive significant events in their mutual childhoods and search for answers, both past and present.

FROZEN is as much about Harry as it is about Verity. Burke takes the reader back 20 years through Harry's eyes, with all of its anguish, hopes and dreams, frustrations, and misunderstandings in one fateful summer. Does the answer lay buried in the past? or is it the present he finds he actually knew so little about that caused her fall?

Burkes portrayal of Harry is brooding as he delves into Harry's anguish at not having 'been there' for the friend he has loved for so many years. He makes the reader feel the frustration, the groping for answers, and the ups and downs as Harry searches for answers. The clues are there, but until Harry manages to unravel them, he will not be able to say "Good-bye".

Webspinner - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Webspinner - RAM