When he wakes to find a body in a sack on the roadside outside his home, police chief Vincents sets off a chain of events that threaten to overwhelm him and the sleepy, Latvian backwater town he has lived in his whole life.
A reluctant and unlikely hero, Vincents grapples with his failing marriage, a domineering former police partner and an ever-growing number of strange and bewildering cases. As the body count rises and Vincents' precariously constructed world crumbles around him, the focus of his investigations closes in inexorably on a troubled young man, Jens, whose odd behaviour can no longer be contained by his controlling Aunt Erika.
Ice, Flower, Herbarium is a haunting psychological story of inherited guilt and the consequences of raising a child without love or human touch. Will Vincents uncover the truth and find the strength to stand up to the town, or will his resolve melt away with the snow?
What did I think?
If Ice Flower Herbarium was any more atmospheric I would have had to put my woolly hat and gloves on! Wow! What a fantastic piece of crime fiction from Dzena Andersone, beautifully translated by Žanete Vēvere Pasqualini. It is certainly one of the best translated crime fiction novels I have read.
From the very first page I was thrust into the snow and ice of the isolated Latvian location and could easily visualise the scenery through the vivid and evocative writing. It's plotted quite differently as the reader knows what has happened to the missing woman and how the body ended up outside Vincents' house but it is more about why this happened and it is heartbreaking. I didn't think I would ever sympathise with a killer!
It speaks volumes that I am still thinking about the book after I finished reading it and I have even been talking about it to family and friends. I can't really go into what I have been talking about as it would spoil it for other readers but it really did make me grateful for the life that I personally have had.
Ice Flower Herbarium is the first Latvian novel that I have read and what an absolute cracker it is! It's a book I couldn't put down when I picked it up and couldn't stop thinking about when I put it down. Very highly recommended.
Many thanks to Fly on the Wall Press for a gifted ARC; this is my honest and unbiased opinion.
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