Even though Commandant Martin Servaz is busy with a murder case in Toulouse, his deputy chief sends him to Saint- Martin-de-Comminges in the French Pyrenees to assist in the investigation of a very bizarre murder. No sooner does he arrive in town than two more murders, staged to look like suicides, occur, followed closely by the disappearance of another person. Could all of these killings be related? That's what Servaz has to find out.

As forensic evidence is gathered and analyzed from the crime scenes, Servaz is shocked to learn that DNA from two of them matches a dangerous inmate incarcerated at the Wargnier Institute, a nearby psychiatric asylum for the criminally insane. Since the man is being held in a locked maximum security unit of the asylum, how could his DNA be found outside the institute? That's just one of many baffling questions Servaz and the Saint-Martin gendarmerie must answer.

Diane Berg, a Swiss psychologist newly arrived at the Wargnier Institute, is immediately aware that there's something wrong in the handling of patients, as well as the pharmaceutical treatments. When Diane learns of the murders taking place nearby, she's concerned that there could be a connection to the asylum. Will Diane's clandestine investigation help the police as it also places her life in danger?

THE FROZEN DEAD, the debut thriller by French author Bernard Minier, is nail-biting suspense first page to last. With the chillingly atmospheric setting of the snowy French Pyrenees, characters so realistic they leap off the page and a plot full of surprising twists and turns, THE FROZEN DEAD is a first-rate thriller not to be missed.

Book Summary

In a snowbound valley, deep in the French Pyrenees, a dark story of madness and revenge is unfolding.

The first victim is a horse: its headless, flayed body hangs suspended from the edge of a frozen cliff. On the same day as the gruesome discovery takes place, Diane Berg, a young psychiatrist starts her first job at a high security asylum for the criminally insane, just a few miles away. She is baffled by the slightly unorthodox methods the asylums's director uses, and then greatly alarmed when she realizes that drugs are disappearing from within the fortified institution while someone seems to be slipping out at night.

Commandant Martin Servaz, a charismatric, Toulouse city cop fond of quoting Latin, can’t believe he has been called out over the death of an animal. But there is something disturbing about this crime that he cannot ignore. Then DNA from one of the most notorious inmates of the asylum, a highly intelligent former prosecutor who is accused of killing and raping several women, is found on the corpse... and a few days later the first human murder takes place.

Servaz and his colleague, the mysterious Irene Ziegler, must use all their skill to solve the terrifying mystery.