CITY OF ICE
By John Farrow
Random House, 1999, $25.95

If you have a hankering to get away from the intense heat we’ve suffered this summer, "City of Ice" is the book to read. Set in an icy January in Montreal, it provides at least brief respite from temperatures in the nineties.

However, it’s a good book to read even if the heat doesn’t bother you.

This thoughtful and thought-provoking novel is billed as a thriller. It’s that, certainly, but John Farrow’s novel is a morality tale that forces the reader to study personal ethics and behavior.

Sergeant Detective Emile Cinq-Mars of the Montreal police has earned a reputation as a moralist, a cop so clean that fellow officers regard him with suspicion. A practicing Roman Catholic, he is teased for his uprightness, and co-workers refer to him — usually derisively — as Saint Emile or simply as "the priest."

A saint he is not, but Cinq-Mars has problems when it comes to bending his own personal rules of conduct.

His personal morals are tested quickly and sorely as this tale develops.

For years Cinq-Mars has been the beneficiary of mysterious tidbits called to him by an unknown informant, whose facts have been accurate and so helpful that the detective has gained a crime-solving reputation that has turned him into a citywide celebrity. This informant does not ask for payment, or favors — no parking tickets to be fixed or felony charges needing adjustment. But down deep inside, Cinq-Mars knows that payday will eventually come.

Then questions arise when the Montreal police make a raid and find the mutilated body of a young man who had been working undercover. His Santa Claus costumed body was found stuffed into a wardrobe, a meat hook stuck in his back. The youth’s name was Hagop Artinian, and he was a total stranger to Cinq-Mars. But someone knew that the victim had a relationship to the detective, because a cryptic and sarcastic message was left: "Merry Xmas, M5."

Cinq-Mars found the message especially unsettling, for it was clearly directed at him personally. The M5 is a reference to the date March 5, which could be interpreted, in French, as Cinq-Mars’ name.

It is a warning. Someone is aware of the detective’s relationship with his privileged informant, but Cinq-Mars does not know who sent the message, much less the name of his informant.

His police unit is investigating the activity of rival motorcycle street gangs, and this investigation is complicated by the intrusion of Russian mobsters.

Elsewhere in the city a wily CIA operative is recruiting a college girl from a dysfunctional family. The operative wants her to infiltrate one of the gangs but misses a key point in his hurry-up training session for this novice "agent."

"City of Ice" builds to a tense, heart-stopping climax. It is truly a page-turner, but the main character’s introspection will soon have you wondering about your own personal ethics. The author raises distinct and thoughtful questions about police ethics. Just how far can the police go in attempting to solve crime and to nail the perpetrator? These are not questions pertaining to judicial treatment. Cinq-Mars is not concerned about whether his case will be thrown out of court. He is concerned about whether this or that tactic is the right thing to do.

The plot is heavy with corruption within the police and treachery among co-workers and friends.

Nevertheless, the reader will come away satisfied that somehow right can and will prevail.

Random House describes John Farrow as the pseudonym for a respected Canadian writer of literary fiction. This is his first thriller and his first book published in the United States.

Florence Gilkeson is the senior writer for The Pilot.