Cold Fear

A Thriller by
Brandon Webb and John David Mann
Bantam Books, 2022

Another Icelandic thriller for winter reading.

This novel is not by Icelandic authors: Webb and Mann are an American writing team. Despite that fact, the way the authors handle the Reykjavík setting is commendable, with a lot of street-level action occurring in the novel. It even has a (mostly) accurate map to help the reader “navigate” the town. The protagonist, Finn, a disgraced Navy Seal, finds himself in Reykjavík, on the run, trying to find details about a traumatic experience he had in Yemen years earlier. He becomes involved in a situation where a young woman has evidently committed suicide under the ice at Tjörnín, the pond in the center of town. He also discovers that a trio of Seals are in town to neutralize him, and that a solo assassin is also in the area, looking to eliminate all four of them. The body from the pond disappears and the clockwork plot is set into motion.

Via a hacked cell-phone, Finn develops a weird relationship with Krista, a Reykjavík police investigator. There are other MacGuyver-isms in the story that threaten to sidetrack the narrative but then again, this isn’t exactly a police procedural.

This is pretty standard thriller fare, barely believable but well-written and, as I mentioned before, full of details and descriptions of Reykjavík. It is great fun if you know the city on foot. Fairly grisly (more murders happen in a week in the book than happen in Iceland in a decade) but it maintains its pace right to the exciting finale.

Marginal recommendation.