David Josua Goldberg, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, is found shot, execution-style, in his Frankfurt, Germany, home. Scrawled in his blood are the numbers 11645.
The autopsy reveals a tattoo that was usually exclusive to Hitler's SS. Detectives Oliver Bodenstein and Pia Kirchhoff are mystified. Was Goldberg not actually Jewish? Further complicating the situation, within a matter of days, two more people are found dead. The number 11645 is again found at the crime scenes. Bodenstein and Kirchhoff have to tread cautiously: all three of the elderly victims were friends of Vera Kaltensee, former Baroness of Zeydlitz-Lauenburg. Political pressure from the influential Kaltensee family, plus suspected ties to über-Nazis, make the situation extremely tricky. When two more bodies turn up and two men go missing, Bodenstein and Kirschoff must race to catch the killers, whether the political powers-that-be want the case solved or not.
The Ice Queen is action packed, with the detectives frantically trying to figure out what's going on while the victims multiply. The links to the evil side of World War II make it darkly mysterious, while modern concerns about political image are all too familiar.
With surprising depth and some downright funny moments, The Ice Queen is a perfect balance of the humorous and the macabre. Although The Ice Queen is third in the Bodenstein and Kirchhoff series, new readers will be quickly drawn into the story and its themes of revenge and secrecy, without feeling like they're missing anything. Their only dilemma will be the long wait for the next book to be translated into English. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm