The Ice House

Minette Walters

Ignore the description on the back of the book, which makes it sound like one of those faint comedies of manners upon which something untoward has occurred, allowing its tea-swilling Eton-accented smoking-jacket-wearing ninnies to play armchair detective. Instead, Minette Walters wades into her nastiness with a vengence, and by the end of the first chapter we're already elbow-deep in ichor.

Three women-- a divorcee, a never-married left-wing writer, and a woman whose marital status is somewhat questionable (she says her husband walked out on her; the townspeople in the area think she's killed him)-- share the wonderfully-named Streech Grange, a huge and mostly unused mansion above the town of Streech. A rather foul-smelling body is found, by a dog, in the Grange's seldom-used ice house. The Chief Inspector is the same man who headed up the investigation into the disappearance of the man of the house ten years ago, and is convinced the decayed body is that of the long-dead husband. His chief assistant, who's never quite sure his boss is right, finds himself attracted to the writer, and the fun begins.

Of the three Walters novels I've read so far, this one is the easiest read, and it's also the most shameless in its manipulations of the reader (there are times when one wishes Walters would have just inserted, in large red letters, "FORESHADOWING AHEAD"). Still, it's quite easy to see why this caused such a stir when it popped up out of nowhere in 1992. Walters writes a cracking mystery novel, throws in more than enough twists to keep the reader enchanted, and while her love-hate relationships are the stuff movies have been made of since the invention of celluloid, at least her characters are odd enough to make watching the battle enjoyable. I'll certainly keep going back to this particular well to drink from, even with that coppery taste in the water. *** 1/2