In 2014 Bernard Minier began a new series that features the Commandant Martin Servaz, a city police officer from Toulouse. The novel features an atmosphere that’s chilling, both metaphorically and literally, and starts a thrilling adventure that’s marred with a seriously creepy series of crimes.
The plot starts with Martin Servaz getting pulled off the murder of a homeless man and put onto a case that doesn’t even involve the death of a human, much to his annoyance. The body of a horse that has been both mutilated and decapitated has been left suspended at a cable care terminus, which terrifies the working from a nearby water plant that have to take the tram to their work. The owner of the horse, and the water plant is the ultra-wealthy Eric Lombard, who also owns companies that span the globe and has made a lot of friends in very high places.
The case is compounded by the presence of a psychiatric institution in the vicinity which specializes in the treatment of extremely dangerous murderers, including a sociopath who bears a resemblance to Hannibal Lecter, but the asylum has security measures in place that make it possib
le to escape from (Publishers Weekly review).
Not one to shy away from prickly subjects, The Frozen Dead also features a swath of teenage suicides that connect to the main plot in clever ways. The host of characters that get introduced throughout the novel aren’t easy to forget, from the attractive police captain, Irene Ziegler, to the fledgling psychiatrist, Diane Berg, their stories neatly tie into the plot and help bind the story together in to a thriller that’s difficult to put down.
When you read this novel, you’ll find that you simply can’t ignore the vivid and descriptive setting of the Pyrenees, that is wonderfully written about and provides the perfect backdrop for a story like this one. Thanks to Minier’s upbringing in just such a location, he is able to bring his accurate description of the natural surroundings in a way that would fall flat if not attempted by a native. Debuting to rave reviews, the planned future instalments that feature Commandant Martin Servaz are sure to find themselves being read by modern crime novel lovers around the world.
