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Cold Comfort Audiobook
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(3.02) - 146 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
Officer Gunnhildur, recently promoted from her post in rural Iceland to Reykjavík's Serious Crime Unit, is tasked with hunting down escaped convict Long Ommi, who has embarked on a spree of violent score-settling in and around the city. Meanwhile, she's also investigating the murder of a fitness guru in her own city-center apartment. As Gunna delves into the cases, she unearths some unwelcome secrets and influential friends shared by both guru and convict.
Set in an Iceland plagued by an ongoing financial crisis, Gunna has to take stock of the whirlwind changes that have swept through the country—and the fact that at the highest levels of power, the system's endemic corruption still leads, inevitably, to murder.
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"I did enjoy this second instalment but sometimes found the shear number of characters overwhelming"
— Dylan (4 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
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“In British author Bates’ solid follow-up to 2010’s Frozen Assets, Gunnhildur ‘Gunna’ Gísladóttir, now a sergeant with the Serious Crime Unit in Reykjavík, Iceland, looks into the murder of minor celebrity Svana Geirs, who hosted a TV fitness show and was intimately involved with various athletes and business figures…Bates, who lived ten years in Iceland…manages to engage the reader as Gunna explores the prominent men who knew Svana and deals with Magnùsson’s carnage.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“Porter is undaunted by the names of local people and places and smoothly transitions between the many characters. The complex mystery is centered on what appears to be separate crimes: the murder of a beautiful woman and an escaped convict’s assaults on his former associates. Porter moves the dialogue along quickly as the skillful negotiations of Gunna and her team reveal that the case is not a simple murder and that its political overtones must be reckoned with.”
— AudioFile -
“Twisty, complex, and dark.”
— Booklist -
“More routine than Gunna’s debut, but still required reading for anyone who wants a sense of how calamitous Iceland’s meltdown was—and what just might be in store for American police procedurals next.”
— Kirkus Reviews
Cold Comfort Listener Reviews
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" With the unpronounceable Icelandic names, it was a little difficult to follow. For example, there were three characters whose names began with Bj-----. Thank goodness for Kindle! I was a little disappointed at the conclusion. I didn't follow how Gunna arrived at the solution of one of the murders. "
— Jess, 1/6/2014 -
" This is the Dostoyevksy of murder mysteries--it is written by an English author and set in Iceland, and the names are voluminous and challenging to follow (which I have found to be less true when I am visiting Iceland, but maybe I didn't meet enough people on either visit for it to make much of a difference)--but once you get over that, this is a good murder mystery series--Gunna is a character that you can enjoy as a protagonist, and th etwo book sin the series that I have read have contained current controversies that exist in Iceland today, so it has the advantage of armchair travel--where you learn something about another country simply by reading. "
— Catherine, 12/21/2013 -
" Not a bad mystery. The Icelandic names were a bit hard to follow though. "
— Fran, 12/16/2013 -
" Gunna is back. She's the Icelandic Sara Lund. "
— Jude, 11/28/2013 -
" It was a read with little of the existing fauna brought into the dialog. I like to know what the place is about. "
— Kenneth, 7/20/2013 -
" Loved the first novel "Frozen Assets". Second novel in the series is hard to follow. Those wonderful Icelandic names begin to look the same eventually. Love Gunni, though, and look forward to a sequel. "
— Kimberley, 4/25/2013 -
" too many awkward, disjointed moments for me to give it a 4 "
— Angela, 12/18/2012 -
" Fun read. I like the main character. She's hard headed and hard working. A fun addition to Icelandic mysteries. "
— P, 9/16/2012 -
" Set in post-crash Reykjavik, Cold Comfort devolves into a pile of related corpses with Gunnhilder and her troupe running around like Keystone Cops. Not so fast that you can't keep the victims' identities separate, but not so leisurely that you care about them or the perps. Mildly entertaining. "
— Susan, 7/6/2012 -
" Oh, the tedium! Oy. Could not finish this book, with its glacial pacing and its nearly pulse-less protagonist. "
— Emma, 2/26/2012
About Quentin Bates
Quentin Bates lived in Iceland for ten years before moving back to the United Kingdom in 1990, where he became a full-time journalist at a commercial fishing magazine. He and his wife frequently return to Iceland, where they have many friends, including several in the Reykjavík police.
About Davina Porter
Davina Porter has been enthralling listeners for over twenty-five years with her ability to mine the psychological depths of the characters she reads and bring them convincingly to life. In 2006, she won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Female Narration and in 2004 for Best Inspirational Literature Narration. She has been honored as an AudioFile Golden Voice and has won nineteen AudioFile Earphones Awards. As an actress, she has appeared on stage at the Vineyard Playhouse and the Square One Theater, among others.