I'm always looking for books set in locations I have a little familiarity with, it's for this reason I have read so many books set in Berlin. However, I have struggled a little to find too many books set in another city close to my heart, Amsterdam. I came across this series somewhere online and after enjoying The Darkness I felt like reading another crime novel with a female lead detective. As much as I love books by Mankell and Nesbo it is nice to have the change of pace that a female leads brings. I avoided reading too much of the synopsis so that I came into the book as open minded as possible.

Our lead character is Lotte Meerman who seems to specialise in cold cases. As the book starts she has solved a 15 year old case involving the murder of a little girl. This case is currently in the hands of the prosecutor awaiting trial but she is still haunted by the memories of the case and it is causing her nightmares. To help her avoid the pain these memories brings she throws herself into another cold case investigation involving the murder of a man involved in a financial crime. As she starts digging it emerges that her estranged father, a retired detective, was involved in the original investigation. There are some evidential irregularities and despite the fact that she knows she should hand the investigation over due to the conflict of interest she doesn't and soon gets sucked deeper into a situation she can't see an escape from.

I feel a bit conflicted about this book, there were some parts I really liked and other parts that seemed to jar a bit with me. The parts that jarred are probably just down to my preferred style of writing so take what I say with a pinch of salt. Starting with the good stuff, the story is really well paced. There is enough going on to keep to keep the story moving on but not too much that it gets messy. The setting is really well described and being winter really adds an extra element to the atmosphere generated by the writing. I also really liked Lotte even if I did think some of her decisions were a bit crazy. Like all the best detectives she is a bit of a loner but doesn't isolate herself completely from other members of her team. She has some demons but they all come from a place that is completely understandable. Now the parts I didn't get on with. I found the first person writing a bit hard to settle with in places. I'm pretty confident that is down to me and not the writing as I don't think I have read another crime novel written in the first person and this is why I found it a bit strange. My other bugbear is that I found the mass of people involved a little hard to follow a few times. This again I think is more of a reflection on me rather than the book.

Overall I enjoyed the book and I have already got the next in the series on my Kindle for when the fancy takes me. ( )

Policing runs in Lotte Meerman’s family. Her father is a retired police officer, and she herself is on the force with the cold case squad. One of the cold cases that crosses her desk happens to be her father’s last case before he retired—and something’s fishy about it that makes him look like a suspect. And as if that isn’t enough, Lotte is still dealing with the fallout (personal and professional) from a particularly traumatic case.

I liked the idea of this series, and the setting of Amsterdam was definitely a draw. It was a good choice to set the book in winter, too, because most people’s image of Amsterdam is going to be a nice sunny day in April, when the tulips are out. But in comparison to other mysteries I’ve read recently, I found this one flat. There were some good turns of phrase and a good cast of characters, but for whatever reason I found myself stuck at “almost liked this, but not quite.” ( )

This book was a slow build of mystery/suspense and I found myself hooked by Lotte Meerman's story. Anja de Jager weaves her tale masterfully, using frozen midwinter Amsterdam as the perfect noir backdrop to intertwining mysteries. The anti-hero/narrator, Lotte, is so damaged and relatable. Even though I'm not usually a big reader of this genre, I loved this book and I look forward to reading more by this author. ( )