Description
A melting glacier gives up its secrets, a man is murdered in his ritzy beachside home, and the Christchurch detectives get to work. Two mysteries, two separate investigations… or are they? A handful of Christchurch rich listers start eyeing their assets and shaking in their Jimmy Choos, but the police are cold on the trail until once again Detective Jack Simmons calls on criminal psychologist Nellie Prayle to help them navigate a powerful web of secrets and lies frozen in time.
With a stalker, a couple of ex-parolees, a cop with his own agenda and a journalist who won’t quit thrown into the mix, Nellie and the team soon realise their questions have barely scratched the surface. And just as her personal life is warming up nicely too …
Set against the dramatic beauty of the Southern Alps and the elite world of some of Christchurch’s rich and powerful, Icefall is a classic murder mystery where Nellie’s search for truth and justice push her skills to the edge, where lines between friends and enemies are blurred, and more than one suspect is skating on thin ice.
Marie Connolly has been an academic for over thirty years, working in university and government settings. An expert in child protection systems, she began her academic career at the University of Canterbury and moved to Australia in 2010 to take up a professorial position at the University of Melbourne. Retiring in 2019, she returned to Aotearoa and now writes more eclectically, publishing children’s books, film review blogs and various community arts books. In 2024 she published her first crime novel, Dark Sky, which was a finalist in the 2025 Ngaio Marsh Awards for first novel. Icefall is her second novel in the Nellie Prayle series. She lives in Akaroa with her partner George.
