Quentin Bates adds to the growing volume of Scandinavian crime fiction with Soho Crime’s Jan. 10, 2012 U.S. release of Cold Comfort. This second book in Bates' Officer Gunnhildur Mysteries finds Sergeant Gunnhildur "Gunna" Gísladóttir taking up her new command post with Reykjavík, Iceland’s Serious Crime Unit.
Gunna has two immediate crimes to investigate. She must find Long Ommi, an escaped convict implicated in assaults on some of his former associates in crime. She must also identify the murderer of fitness guru Svana Geirs, a woman at the center of a sex scandal involving members of Reykjavík’s political and economic elite.
Gunna soon realizes that her two cases are not as separate as they first appeared. Long Ommi’s arrest for murder ten years earlier connected him both to Svana and to the three men who were paying her for sex.
What Gunna does not yet realize is that the wildcard in the case is Jón Jóhannsson. His financial losses in Iceland’s 2008 economic collapse have placed him on a direct path to an encounter with one of Gunna’s chief suspects.
In Gunna Gísladóttir, Quentin Bates has created a character who appeals both on professional and personal levels. She proves herself to be a skilled police officer and an able director of the two officers reporting to her. A single mother, she also faces the everyday crises involved in raising two children alone.
In an April 4, 2011 interview published in Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Quentin Bates offered his own view on the reasons why Gunna so attracts his readers. He responds particularly to the view of her as "heroic."
"I’m not sure how heroic she is, although I keep piling problems on her," says Bates. "I suppose that the heroic part is that she does cope with all the flak that comes her way and all the brickbats that life in general throws at us. I certainly didn’t set out to make her a heroic figure – although what I see as heroic is to take a stand and not follow the herd. Demanding answers to the questions that others don’t think or want to ask is heroic in my eyes."
Soho Crime will also issuing a U.S. paperback edition of Frozen Assets (aka Frozen Over), the first of Bates' Officer Gunnhildur Mysteries, on the same date as its release of Cold Comfort. Bates is now working on the third book in this series, Chilled to the Bone.
FTC Full Disclosure: A review copy of this work was provided by Soho Crime.
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