When a fish-nibbled corpse floats up into a fisherman’s ice hole in the frozen wastes of Blackwater Bay one morning, the shock is enough to shake Jess Gibbons out of an idle reverie on the gloomy state of her life. And as soon as Sheriff Matt Gabriel’s team confirm the body to be a mob-connected New York ex-con who could have been in the area to carry out a hit, Blackwater’s quiet streets threaten to be submerged by a ravenous media circus. Then a second puzzle emerges: a girl from the local high school and one of Jess’s pupils, inexplicably goes missing. As the community prepares for its annual Ice Festival, speculation abounds as Matt and Jess seek to solve the burning questions of the hour. Are the two cases connected? Was the girl’s recent caution for drug use a factor? And will Jess sort her life out in time for the wife-sliding competition? Weaving diverse strands together with great wit and ingenuity, The Dead of Winter is another hugely entertaining slice of murder and mystery from the Great Lakes