***
NOVEL: The Ice House
AUTHOR: Minette Walters
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1992
I picked up this paperback, a mystery novel about a dead body found in an ice house on the grounds of an English country estate, thinking it was going to be a cozy mystery, something like an Agatha Christie story. It seemed to have the right elements: suspicious characters, women living in seclusion, nosy and gossiping neighbors, a police officer with an agenda, servants with traumatic pasts, a kind pub owner, some illicit love affairs, an old lady who knows more than most people suspect, and so on. But I was quickly disabused of the notion of having the violence and sex downplayed in this book, from the very first crude paragraph that sets the scene: “’Fred Phillips is running.’ Anne Cattrell’s remark burst upon the silence of that August afternoon like a fart at a vicar’s tea party.”
So we have the various suspects lying, additional acts of violence, secrets long hidden, red herrings, and hints of romance, but we also have vivid descriptions of the mutilated and naked dead body, the dog eating part of it, and the witnesses vomiting. The women in the house are rumored to be lesbians, or possibly witches, or both. One of the investigators has a serious drinking problem (as well as a serious marital problem). Phoebe Maybury, lady of the manor, was suspected of killing her husband ten years prior, although no body had ever been found. With a body now discovered on her property—well, she certainly couldn’t have killed him twice, as much as, were that possible, he may have deserved it.
***
Not for the faint of heart (or faint of stomach), it’s well written, with some truly surprising plot twists, and more than a hint of moral ambiguity.
***
RATING (one to five whistles, with five being the best): 3 Whistles
***
HOW TO PURCHASE: Amazon
***
Laura LaVelle is an attorney and writer who lives in Connecticut, in a not quite 100-year-old house, along with her husband, two daughters, and a cockatiel.
Laura can be contacted at laura@newswhistle.com
***
Lead-In Image (“Ice Blocks”) Courtesy of haraldmuc / Shutterstock.com
***
ALSO ON OUR BOOKSHELVES:
A Countess Below Stairs, Eva Ibbotson
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler
A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Anne Of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon
Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan
Books for Living, Will Schwalbe
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast
Cheaper by the Dozen, Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. & Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Cockpit Confidential, Patrick Smith
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Decorating a Room of One’s Own, Susan Harlan
Diary of a Provincial Lady, E.M. Delafield
Ed Emberly’s Drawing Book of Animals, Ed Emberly
Endangered Pleasures, Barbara Holland
Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer
Fever Dream, Samanta Schweblin
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, & Jack Thorne
Hemingway Didn’t Say That, Garson O’Toole
Hide My Eyes, Margery Allingham
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin
Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
I Will Always Write Back, Caitlin Alifirenka & Martin Ganda with Liz Welch
If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino
Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
Lizard Music, Daniel Pinkwater
Madeleine’s Ghost, Robert Girardi
Malice Aforethought, Frances Iles
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer
My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
New York New York, Richard Berenholtz
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik
One Summer: America 1927, Bill Bryson
Out of the Blackout, Robert Bernard
Parnassus on Wheels & The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley
Plotted: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff
Sanditon, Jane Austen and Another Lady
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rivelli
Straying from the Flock: Travels in New Zealand, Alexander Elder
Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart
Tales of the Unexpected, Roald Dahl
The Book of Forgotten Authors, Christopher Fowler
The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith
The Dancer of Izu, Kawabata Yasunari
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, John Bellairs
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
The Longbourn Letters, Rose Servitova
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman
The Making of Jane Austen, Devoney Looser
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks
The Missing Piece, Shel Silverstein
The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah
The Mother & Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, Thad Carhart
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion
The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel (illustrator), Maurice Sendak (introduction)
The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats
The Swans of Fifth Avenue, Melanie Benjamin
The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer
The Three Questions, Jon J Muth
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki
The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang
The Weird World of Wes Beattie, John Norman Harris
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
The Woman in Black, Susan Hill
The Women in Black, Madeleine St John
They Call Me Naughty Lola, David Rose
Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe
When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
Worth a Thousand Words, Brigit Young
You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, Eleanor Roosevelt
