The Ice Maiden (Doug Bateman Thrillers)

It’s a page turner! Loved the characters. The setting reminded me of my hometown. Can’t wait to read the next one!

Great characters along with a good story! The location is unique also,But I didn't enjoy lots of the somewhat extraneous information.

Good book. Nice storyline. Solid writing. Well developed characters. Looking forward to reading the next one. Would definitely recommend to anyone.

The Scene: Almost five hours north of Boston and three hours from Portland, Sebec Lake, and its surroundings, primarily the City of Dover-Foxcroft, Maine.The Protagonists: Dough Bateman, a senior investigator with the Major Crime Unit of the Maine State Police, a native, and Anne Quinn, detective investigator with the Piscataquis County's Sheriff Department, a recent implant from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a proud owner of a 1974 immaculately kept Toyota Landcruiser.Other Actors: Dough's semi-estranged wife, a bunch of good guys, mostly law enforcement, a carefully selected sample of psychopaths, an eccentric, sociopath Millionaire, a self-centered fop, restaurant personnel, neighbors and tourists.The Social Milieu: All the men are ice fishers, all the women are active gossipers, and all the children would be above average if there were many around. Sebec Lake is not Lake Wobegon.The plot in the main is the serial killings of young women with a definitively Catholic characteristic. It soon becomes evident that the killer is local who purposefully leaves behind clues/messages to taunt his pursuers, specifically, Dough. A sub-plot is the shenanigans of the eccentric millionaire, who, in the end, is hoisted (literally) by his own petard.What can a reader learn from this book (always my primary concern)?A great deal about the Spanish Inquisition, means, methods, and instruments of torture, and the auto de fé (Act of Faith), the 13th to 16th Centuries precursor of reality TV.The logging paths, streets, and roads of the Piscataquis Lake, and Central Maine. So much so that after reading the book, I can rent out myself as a tour guide for passing-by tourists. This would serve as an excellent example for future mystery/thriller writers how quickly more turns into less.That the protagonists religiously stick to the two primary food groups of cheeseburgers with French fries and doughnuts. For goodness sake, never a lobster bisque in Maine?This is, in a nutshell, the story because the last thing I have in mind is to take away the well-constructed narrative to keep the readers on the edge of their seats while reluctant to put down the book for nature calls or sleep. To put it differently, it is a well-written mystery with a surprise ending, the gore of the killings and the consecutive autopsies' details (which are not for the timid) notwithstanding, in a relatively clean language, because a lot is cop-speech, definitely void of expletives for expletives' sake.In the compulsory happy ending, the two protagonists Chris-Craft away on their respective boats into the sunrise, sunset, or whenever. The start of a meaningful relationship.

I'm surprised by all the good reviews. I found the book quite stilted and dry. It's page after page of exposition dump with the occasional paragraph about a gruesome crime. Was it necessary to discuss 200 years of history about the town the female investigator left in order to move to Maine? And yet, with all the detail thrown in, I still can't visualize much about the area. It's random facts vs. immersive descriptions.The characters are bizarrely unemotional as well. A couple of snowmobilers come across a body frozen in a lake, the feet and part of the legs gnawed off by animals and the husband calmly says, "Hon, call the police." I honestly thought the husband and/or wife would turn out to be police investigators because they displayed only the mildest bit of curiosity - and that was only about what the fox was chewing on, not about the body itself. Are corpses that common in Maine? They were so blase about the dead body that I half expected one of them to say, "Oh, someone's dead? Must be Tuesday."The female investigator has a long flashback about her boyfriend leaving her without warning (house was empty when she got home one day) because 3 grad students accused him of sexual assault. This happened on the day she was giving evidence in a rape case. Instead of either going into denial, "He couldn't have done it! I'm a cop, I would have seen the signs!" or racking her brain for signs she'd missed that he could be a predator or even getting angry and insisting those girls must have been failing the class and concocted a revenge plot, she simply decides this proves the university had gotten too PC and it was time to move on. I just can't see how a female investigator working rape cases would shrug this off so cavalierly. Oh, and a guy not getting tenure because he got terrible class reviews, had his thesis that he staked his academic career on at least partially disproved, and had 3 grad students allege sexual harassment isn't an example of a guy being victimized by petty university politics. It's common sense. Except to the female investigator. Even after he dumped her with no warning, she decided he was a poor innocent soul being victimized by the big, bad university. Nothing he did could have possibly contributed to his lack of tenure.The main male investigator is told by the town gossip that his estranged wife is sleeping with another man. He punches the gossip in the nose, breaking the man's nose, then goes off down the street remarking how his morning wasn't off to a good start. That was the entirety of the emotions in the scene. I don't necessarily expect a long description about every last thing the man felt during the scene, but if there's room in the book for discussing logging in the 1840s, surely there's room for a few mentions of the human emotions that fueled those actions.I finish almost every book I pick up, no matter what, but this book is so flat I'm having problems slogging my way to the conclusion. The murder itself seems interesting, but there are so many random ramblings and so little personality for the characters that the story disappears in the avalanche of dull minutiae.

The Ice Maidens is a police procedural about a serial killer, murdering young women using the techniques of the Spanish Inquisition. As a concept it intrigued me, however something got lost between the idea and the execution.Firstly, the book needs to at least run through Grammarly. I admit grammar isn't my strongest talent but even I know too many commas disrupt the flow of the narrative.Secondly, every writing course I've ever attended has stressed the 'show don't tell' school of writing. The Ice Maidens tells you what's happening, it shows you nothing. None of the characters are effectively described, which is crazy because every thing else is described until you're bored. So many sections telling us about ex-boyfriends and trees and the bumps in the road that ultimately are not important to the story.When we finally reach the end, the killer's reasoning for his murder spree stretches the readers patience. The one convoluted back-story there is no mention of, yet the one back-story the reader actually needs to know.B.D. Smith's The Ice Maidens is ultimately unsatisfying. It's got a fantastic premise, which has obviously been well researched, but pages of clinical description don't give the story a way to connect with the reader. It's a shame because it had such a huge amount of possibility.

Well written, kept you guessing till the last pages. Can't wait to read the next in the series. Definitely recommended

A seriously enjoyable tale of a vengeance driven serial killer set amidst the beauty of rural central Maine. I loved how the author has set the novel in real places and it was interesting to look at Google Maps to get a feel for the setting. Beautifully paced with a touch of romance to balance out the terror and tragedy, it's a book I thoroughly recommend.

Intense mystery from start to finish. Diffucult to work out who the killer was until very late in the story.

Great crime thriller that you don't want to put down. The characters are great and you quickly become entrenched in their lives. Very enjoyable.