Judith Sullivan is a writer in London, originally from Baltimore. She is working on a crime series set in Paris. Fluent in French, she’s pretty good with English and has conversational Italian and German and 20+ years in Leeds improved her Yorkshire speak.
Who knew that Nordic Noir meets Midlands Mayhem was a thing?
It is, I guess courtesy of The Ice Angels, a new book by Caroline Mitchell who already has several series under her belt (DC Knight, Amy Winter et al). The grisly action in this tome is split between Lincoln in the UK and Porvoo in Finland.
Half Brit/half Finn detective Elea Baker knows only too well the pain inflicted on parents when a child is abducted in broad daylight. Her own daughter Liisa was snatched off the street in Porvoo ten years prior never to be seen again. When a number of Lincoln children vanish in short succession, Elea is drafted in to help the local force with the rescue effort dubbed Operation Turnstile.
Elea’s connection to Lincoln is more than professional. Her onetime husband, Richard Swann, a copper as well, lives there with his new fiancée and the couple’s twin boys. Ice Angels takes place in January, and Lincoln is as bitingly cold as it can get in Finland. Three girls have been snatched (Jenny, Chelsea and Sophie) and the Midlands cathedral city is on edge. The creepiest bit is the trio of kidnappings mirrors the abductions of Anu (a boy) and girls Liisa and Venla, the titular ice angels.
Cue Richard and Elea having to put aside the whole “we used to be married to each other” tension and outpace the kidnapper(s) with a view to saving one or more of the young girls.
Interspersed with the events of today are Liisa’s accounts of her repetitive yet icky days as a hostage. Mitchell’s real skill is in conveying Liisa’s terror and boredom without letting on who has taken the girl or why and where she is kept prisoner. It is a nice shuffling of the narrative deck, which allows the reader to feel Liisa’s pain without being exposed to spoilers.
The pacing of Ice Angels felt a bit off in the first half. However, once a body is found in Lincoln, Mitchell seriously ups the frantic. The second half in which operations Turnstile and Angels begin to dovetail was much pacier and the pages turned themselves. This is in part due to the urgency of the narrative and the constant question as to how two sets of events thousands of miles apart might connect.
Talismans abound and pop up again and again. Velcro shoes and wooden Martta dolls appear at regular intervals and lend realism to the outlandish events.
Spoiler alert: they do connect and in a very satisfying way. On page 378 of 382,
there is also a shocker reveal, which I’d not seen coming. That fact suggests there’ll be another Elea Baker book. A good thing, as the detective is smart and sexy and humane and flawed, all the qualities we want in a series hero.
Mitchell also touches on some important issues that concern Britons in 2026 – human trafficking, the role of social services among them. Swann is also a character we want to meet again, what with his messy home life and skills as a police officer. Readers of Ice Angels meet more of the Lincoln law and order crew than their Finnish counterparts. But they are an interesting bunch, made all the more believable by Mitchell’s years in a CID working with vulnerable victims. Cool coda – her interest in Finland stems from having a brother who lives in that Nordic land.
