Superior crime fiction set in Iceland is continuing to expand. Quentin Bates is an Englishman who lived and worked in the country for many years. Cold Comfort is Bates’s second novel that features the appealingly uneccentric single mother Sergeant Gunnhildur (Gunna) Gisladóttir of the Serious Crimes Unit in Reykjavik. A notoriously promiscuous television celebrity is murdered in her apartment. A violent offender escapes from prison. There are connections between the two incidents, and a number of important people are drawn into the mystery. This is a well constructed, well written and satisfying police procedural.
Cold Comfort by Quentin Bates, Robinson, 330pp, £7.99. To buy this book for £7.59 visit thetimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 08452712134