Book Review: Frozen

Reviewed By: Wes Struebing

Frozen     Amazon US PB Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada PB
Richard Burke
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Amateur Sleuth
Orion Books, Ltd.,   UK Copyright: Richard Burke, 2003

It appears that Verity has attempted to kill herself by jumping off the cliffs at Beachy Head, a favorite of would-be suicides. While she didn't quite succeed, she is barely alive, and Harry is just devastated.

Not understanding how Verity could have done such a thing, Harry, a longtime and dear friend of Verity's wants to find out why. He enlists the aid of other friends to track down answers, he hopes - Adam, a close friend of his and Verity's from childhood, and Sam, Verity's partner in the fashion business. His search takes him to Beachy Head, quite often down memory lane, to a psychiatrist whom Verity was seeing, to Verity's place where he meets one of her lovers, thoroughly disgusting Karel, before he finally is able to put two and two together.

While Verity is the thread that binds these characters together, this is not her story. It is Harry's, his growth, his facing the unanswered questions from his past (many of those, told in flashbacks), his relationships with his present circle, his realization that as close as he and Verity were, he hardly knew her. His intense desire to "find the real answer", almost to exclusion of anything else, does not endear him to those he interacts with, nor does it make him a very likable character. As Sam says, "Call me again, Harry, when you've grown up."

Burke writes VERY well; it was hard at times to put the book down. That said, the middle and later parts of the books seemed to meander with little purpose and not much enlightenment. This is, most likely, because that's the shape Harry was in, just a single, nearsighted purpose, with almost no thought to direction. Relatively certain I had at least a partial answer, I wanted to reach out and slap Harry upside the head for being so focused on the trees that he couldn't see the forest. That is, perhaps, a good thing; Burke got me involved.

Wes Struebing

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Wes Struebing