The Frozen Shroud

March 4, 2013
Edwards’s layered, atmospheric sixth Lake District mystery (after 2011’s The Hanging Wood) finds Det. Chief Insp. Hannah Scarlett, who heads the Cumbria cold-case unit, facing budget cuts that threaten to gut her division. To make things worse, her officious supervisor directs Scarlett to choose who goes and who stays. On top of that, Scarlett is adjusting to the breakup of a long-term relationship. Meanwhile, a five-year-old murder—a crime linked to another murder a century earlier—attracts Scarlett’s attention. In both murders, which occurred around Halloween, the female victim’s head was battered in, with a shroud draped over the shattered facial features. The cases were ostensibly solved, but the deaths of the main suspects before the investigations could truly be joined left some room for doubt. The creepy premise, coupled with a neat resolution, offers hope that this series will only get better.