Ice Trap: A Novel of Psychological Suspense » (Bargain)

Kitty Sewell, a psychotherapist and a sculptor, was born in Sweden but met her husband, a young English doctor, while living in Northern Canada. Sewell and her family now divide their time between Wales and Spain, where they own and operate a fruit plantation. Translated into more than ten languages, Ice Trap is Sewell's first novel.

Dear Doctor Woodruff,

I hope you don't mind me writing to you.
I think I'm your daughter....

This international bestseller is a startlingly assured first novel of deception, ambiguity, and shattering revelations.

At the height of his career, a British surgeon has found success in both the hospital and at home. He and his wife have everything they want out of life, except the child she longs for, the child Dr. Woodruff secretly believes he may never be ready to parent.

Suddenly, the delicate equilibrium of their relationship is blown apart by the arrival of shocking news. Deep in the desolate sub-Arctic wilderness of Canada where Woodruff lived and worked years before, a woman claims he is the father of her thirteen-year-old twins.

Woodruff knows it cannot be true — but DNA tests don't lie.

To make sense of the impossible, he must return to that frozen wilderness, where no rules and few laws apply. Leaving his shattered relationship behind, he finds that his well-guarded secrets have even deeper and more sinister layers. But the people he once knew in that godforsaken place guard secrets of their own, and no one — least of all the ruthless woman at the dark core of this maelstrom — will help him uncover the truth.

The past quickly gains a stranglehold, threatening to unravel everything Woodruff has built — his marriage, his career. And a man who has made one mistake may pay dearly for another — and risk destroying his entire future....

1. A Bertelsmann Book Club International Book of the Month
2. A Literary Guild Main Selection
3. Shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger Award
4. Shortlisted for the Hay Festival Welsh Book of the Year

Lisa O'Hara - Library Journal

Sewell's first novel is an unusual tale of suspense set in the Canadian subarctic. Early in his career, Dr. Dafydd Woodruff spent a year in the town of Moose Creek working with Sheila Hailey, a nurse who made no secret of her dislike for him. Thirteen years later, as Dafydd and his wife are struggling with infertility, he receives a bombshell of a letter from Sheila's daughter claiming he is her biological father. While Dafydd knows this is impossible, a DNA test seems to prove the matter beyond a doubt. Dafydd's life in Wales begins to collapse, and he returns to Moose Creek to investigate, finding that while some things have changed, others have remained the same, including Sheila's hatred toward him. While the plotline is compelling and readers will want to know how matters is resolved, none of the main characters is very sympathetic, and the ending is predictable. Recommended for public libraries with mystery/fiction collections because of the unusual premise and Sewell's descriptions of the Canadian Arctic. [Published in the United Kingdom in 2005, Ice Trapwas short-listed for the Crime Writers' Association's New Blood Award and the Hay Festival Welsh Book of the Year.-Ed.]