The Ice Princess

You will read many reviews about the bad narration for this book. It is true that the choice of narrator was unfortunate, so to listen to this book successfully, I decided to ignore the quality of the narration and concentrate on the story. I am so glad I did, because the audio book was wonderful. I found it easy to get immersed in the story. I even made up reasons to go out on errands so that I could listen to more of this compelling mystery during my drive. I absolutely love dark Scandinavian mysteries (Stieg Larrson, Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell, etc.), especially if the setting is during Winter. Camilla Lackberg has now been added to my regular listening schedule. Her characters are so well developed that after only a few paragraphs, I found myself thinking "I know someone just like that" -- but, the author made them funnier. In particular, I fell in love with the main characters, Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Falck. The small coastal Swedish town sounds so charming that I looked it up the internet to see if you could travel there easily. When I read this was the first book by this young author, I was surprised because her talent matches some of the very best mystery writing that have been around a long time. She has done an outstanding job of writing a well-paced, exciting story. I hope she has a very long career and all her books get translated.

The story was was an original take on a pervasive societal problem.

I liked the setting which was the reason I chose the book.

The narrator sounded like an older British gentleman so did all the characters. Since many of the characters were female and blonde it was hard to imagine them as anything but old and dowdy with this narrator. I was frequently confused about who was talking.

No

I will look for this author again but not this narrator.

i enjoyed this book and author, and hope audible will be able to obtain english translations of Ms. Lackberg's other books.

Yes. Held my attention and I think of it often since finished both it and The Preacher.

Just finding the body. A very different murder approach.

This is Camilla Läckberg's first mystery originally published in Sweden in 2002. It starts out with the discovery of a body of a woman, an apparent suicide, discovered in a bath tub in an unheated house in a former fishing village, now a tourist goal called Fjällbacka. One of the first people on the scene, Erica Falck, was once a close friend of the deceased woman. Because Erica is an author, specializing in the biographies of famous Swedish female authors, she is asked by the dead woman's parents to write about the woman's life. However, as Erica learns about her old friend's secrets she starts to look deeper into what happened that drove them apart as young girls.

The story begins with a bit of a bang but starts to drag a bit about a quarter of the way in. I don't think the characters of the police officers were particularly compelling (or even very interesting). A second death gives the story more impetus and although the answers to some mysteries are quite obvious, the ending is satisfactory.

And that's it for the story, now for the audible part. David Thorn's voice is strongly British and male. His way of voicing female characters is to make them sound breathy and bland. He occasionally will apply some accent, but usually he doesn't. While I might find him a good narrator for another type of book-- one with fewer female characters or one where there is no need for accents, I definitely don't think I would try to listen to him read another Scandinavian set mystery.

I really like the first Camilla Lackberg book that I read and this one is pretty good even though I'm going to bash it. It did have several problems. First, for a detective novel, it had way too much girl to girl sharing and the portrait of the men in the book was very negative. The women in the book, even the positive ones, were incredibly manipulative. The female protagonist, after she compromised her policeman boyfriend, put on her pouting face and sweet-talked him into forgiving him with a sexual advance. Are there really women like that still? Second, I hate it when men try to imitate women's voices. This rendition by David Thorn was particularly offensive. Can't Audible hire two readers for a book like this, one for the women's voices and one for the men's. In addition, his Swedish characters sounded like they were all from England or some English colony. Plus, the twists were so implausible that an otherwise engaging plot became a distraction.

This was an interesting story with some novel ideas and approaches. It kept me engaged for the most part. It was not clear who the killer was and it took a while to figure out all the characters and sub-plots but it was a good read with unpredictable twists and turns. I especially liked the 'maid/mother' character and her relationship with her 'employer'. It was refreshing when she was finally able to speak her 'truth'.

I liked the reader's accent and manner of speech.

This is an interesting book with a fairly compelling mystery. The main character was OK, but I found her silence in the face of actual physical abuse by her brother-in-law completely implausible and infuriating (especially since one of her best friends is an attorney, another is a policeman, and she already suspects this guy of abusing her sister...) One of the false notes in an otherwise fine character. Same complaint regarding Annika, the otherwise sensible clerk at the police station who seems incapable of standing up for herself against flagrant sexual harassment by her incompetent boss, Mehlberg. These inconsistencies are like sour notes in a piece of music. That being said, it was still a good listen, and helped pass the time whenever I was stuck in traffic.

This is a great example of excellent Scandinavian crime/mystery genre. I have only recently discovered this vein of fiction, and I found the Ice Princess excellent. Lackberg paints a rich tapestry of characters and motives that keeps the reader off guard as to the identity of the killer and the motives set within a small,isolated town.

I think there is a certain every man quality about Patrik that I was able to connect to.

In general I enjoyed his performance, I think he has a great voice for the narration and for most of the characters. However, some of the cockney accents used for some of the working class characters I found a little distracting given that the story was set in Sweden. Might just be a pet peeve of mine, especially since I have no idea what a working class cop might sound like in Sweden.

Everyone in the town had a reason to kill her

Had I not already purchased the three mysteries in this series on Audible, I would have chosen to read them instead of listening to them.

This reader has a condescending attitude toward most of the characters, especially the women. He gives many characters a vaguely Cockney accent that is very distracting. He tortures all the names, in an attempt to make them sound more Swedish, I suppose (they don't). The main character he calls alternately Portrick, Pyortrick, Pyoyrtrick, Pyorthrick. I thought the character had an exotic ancestry until I got my hands on the book and discovered his name is Patrik.