#43 - Ice Trap

Book No: 43
Title: Ice Trap
Author: Kitty Sewell
Genre: Suspense
Published: 2008
Obtained: 2008/paperbackswap
Completed: 5/31/08
No. of Pages: 340
Rating: 4/5*****
Dr. Dafydd Woodruff’s marriage is falling apart. The inability to have children has both David and his wife Isabel struggling to maintain the relationship though Isabel is bitterly disappointed in this failure. Things only take a turn from the worse when Dafydd receives a letter from a young girl maintaining that she and her twin brother are his children from a relationship 15 years earlier. Insisting that this is impossible, Dafydd is stunned when the DNA tests he demanded prove he is the father. Deciding that in order to prove his innocence Dafydd leaves Isabel and travels back to Moose Creek, in the Canadian Northwest Territories. It was here Dafydd came 15 years earlier, trying to forget the medical error he made and hoping to rebuild his confidence. Taking an interim position he has a difficult relationship with the caustic head nurse Sheila, who is now claiming he is the father of her children.

This is one of those stories, where you are almost positive that the main character is being expertly played, and you enjoy watching the cat and mouse game between Daffyd and Sheila as the psychological tension ratchets up. The barren town of Moose Creek is a perfect setting for this mystery, with its cast of eccentric characters and the bitter weather as a chilling background. Although some of the resolutions seem a little implausible, overall I enjoyed this suspense tale very much.