A Cold Death in Amsterdam

Book 1 in the Lotte Meerman series. Lotte is an experienced cold case detective who’s just finished a harrowing investigation into the murder of a young girl. Almost immediately she’s involved in another cold case, the killing of a financial fraudster on the day he was released from prison ten years earlier. Lotte’s own estranged father had been in charge of the original investigation and there are irregularities and missing case files to contend with, so it’s a complicated and slightly confusing case. What sets this apart is the portrayal of Lotte, a traumatised woman struggling with depression and PTSD. This doesn’t make it grim reading. Far from it, because Lotte is entirely human but with a core of steel. In fact, most of the characters in this novel are very well described, as is Amsterdam in the grip of the coldest winter in decades. Both Freyja and Cornish Eskimo give this 4-Stars.