Tangled Web UK Review October 2000
The Big Thaw by
Donald Harstad
pbk out August 00
(4th Estate)
at £9.99
Bleak midwinter in Iowa, it’s 30 below zero and fighting the cold is a high priority for Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman. His partner Hester Gorse is pulling security duty on board the Colonel Beauregard, a floating casino docked on the Mississippi River. Carl is investigating a series of break-ins and petty crook Fred confesses that he and two cousins carried them out. But now his cousins are missing - they never came back after the last job. Carl finds their frozen bodies inside the empty house - murdered. Fred is everyone else’s prime suspect but Carl believes he’s innocent. Another suspicious character caught near the scene turns out to be from the FBI and everything escalates into a full scale operation to thwart major criminals intent on robbing banks in the area. Hester is trapped on the casino directly in the line of fire.
A former Deputy Sheriff in Iowa himself, Harstad writes with authority about police work and about the extremes of the cold. There are some genuinely funny moments in the story and Carl Houseman gives us an engaging view of events. However the structure of the final section where the police and federal forces are at some remove from the heart of the action undermines the potential tension of the story and misses out on the chance to exploit the setting of the Beauregard to the full.
Manchester Evening News 18.8.00
(
Cath Staincliffe
- Author of the highly acclaimed Sal Kilkenny Mysteries set on the Mean Streets of Manchester)
