The Ice Hotel by Hania Allen

Three friends vacation in a unique Swedish hotel made of ice, and mystery ensues. Hania Allen is the author of The Polish Detective series, with DI Dania Gorska making a cameo in this standalone thriller.

My high anticipation of a good read was soon tempered down to the standard level of the cover art: a clichéd image of a ubiquitous woman (in usual red coat) walking away. An overused trend by now.

Maggie is still traumatized by the events of her week-long trip 200 km north of the Arctic Circle on the border of Norway, with good friends Liz and Harry. The two women work in pharmaceuticals, and Harry is a University of Dundee professor, a gay gentleman in his fifties.

Built entirely of snow and ice each year, the hotel features an ice chapel, a popular ice bar, and an ice theatre where you can see Shakespeare in snowsuits. Life-sized statues and ice chandeliers adorn the hotel; each unique room is filled with animal skins for warmth. In their tour is a married teacher couple, handsome IT consultant Mike, and billionaire philanthropist Wilson Bibby with his well-built bodyguard son Marcellus. Wilson is closing his charitable foundation and cutting a lot of grants; money that funds Harry's research and Mike's scholarship. When Wilson is found frozen to death, his work diary missing, Bibby's lawyer and Inspector Hallengren arrive to interview and investigate. Could it be the work of the notorious 'Stockholm Hotel' serial murderer? Every few months there is a gruesome killing in an upscale hotel. The press descend, but with everyone in snowsuits and goggles, it is easy to hide. Maggie becomes amateur detective when she is followed, someone is killed with an ice axe, someone almost run down by a snowmobile, and she is attacked watching the Lapland Aurora.

Hania Allen is a Scottish writer, and I mistakenly thought of this as a Swedish mystery when all the characters were Scottish. Everyone had murderous backgrounds, all were implicated, but I found this a middling mystery lacking pace. I felt a spark when Maggie has visions of the killings before they happen, a gift she has always had, but it is not explored. The same with an affair with the Inspector. This is competent with a culprit you won't guess, but I was disappointed. Not to recommend.

2021 / Tradeback / 400 pages