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Black Ice is one of the Colin Dunne thrillers from the 90s, with an English protagonist drawn into an Icelandic case that turns out to involve old NATO intelligence material and a present-day Russian fishing fleet whose movements are more deliberate than the local authorities have noticed.
Dunne's strength is the careful weather atmosphere. The Icelandic geography is rendered with the kind of love that the form does not usually allow, and the small specificities of mid-winter Reykjavik and the rural Eastern Fjords carry the book even when the plot machinery is conventional.
Three stars. A quiet British-Irish intelligence thriller with serious atmospheric work. Recommended to readers who want their spy fiction set somewhere the form does not usually go.
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