Ice Trap: A Novel of Psychological Suspense [Hardcover]

Kitty Sewell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2008

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

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Kitty Sewell's Ice Trap starts with a bombshell. Dafydd Woodruff, who's desperately been trying to conceive a child with his wife, receives a letter: "Dear Doctor Woodruff, I hope you don't mind me writing to you. I think I'm your daughter..."

Suddenly, a relatively innocent past takes over his present life, and that of his wife. It further develops that there isn't just a daughter; this purported "daughter" is actually one of twins, a girl and a boy. Deep in the remote, sub-arctic wilderness where Dafydd had worked 15 years earlier, these children were conceived and born to a woman for whom he felt little but animosity. She was--and still is at the time the novel takes place--head nurse in the hospital where Dafydd did a locum. He was running away from a tragic medical accident, and this distant area seemed like a good place to escape to.

DNA tests are ordered immediately to clear Dafydd in his wife's eyes. The tests are positive, the marriage is very precarious, and Dafydd goes back to the Canadian wilderness to sort things out. What he finds there is complex and compelling. The surprises are not set-ups but develop organically, making the story believable. This is the extremely self-assured debut of a writer to watch. She has deftly created landscape, character, mood and suspense to bring her story to its snapper of a conclusion. --Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of Sewell's intriguing if uneven debut, Dafydd Woodruff, a surgeon in present-day Cardiff, Wales, receives a letter from a 13-year-old girl claiming to be his daughter and to have a twin brother. Flashback 14 years to Moose Creek, a tiny outpost in Canada's Northwest Territories, where Dafydd took a year-long post to clear his conscience after botching the surgery of a young boy in Wales. In that isolated community, Dafydd met Sheila Hailey, an acerbic head nurse, who would later accuse him of fathering her twins. Predictably, Dafydd returns to Moose Creek after learning that the DNA test he demanded proves he's the father of Sheila's children. In his bumbling efforts to unearth the truth about the past, the empathetic Dafydd stumbles on long-buried town secrets. Despite her unusual locale and a strong supporting cast, Sewell is less sure at creating suspense, often stretching out moments of little narrative importance and skimming over others that later prove vital. Still, readers will find this first novel, which was shortlisted for the CWA's New Blood Dagger Award, compulsively readable. (Feb.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1ST edition (February 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416539972
• ISBN-13: 978-1416539971
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,451,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "If you don't like people, there are plenty of bears.", February 20, 2008

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ice Trap: A Novel of Psychological Suspense (Hardcover)

Kitty Sewell makes her debut with "Ice Trap," a novel of suspense that opens in 2006. Dr. Dafydd Woodruff is married to Isabel, an intense woman who is longing to have a child. They are both in their forties, and their fertility specialist tries everything before he reluctantly admits defeat. Isabel is bitterly disappointed; her desperation to conceive is adversely affecting the couple's relationship. "He'd tried to tell her that something vital had been lost, that he now felt too old to be a father--but Isabel was unwavering in her determination to press on."

Next, Sewell takes us back in to 1992, when Dafydd fled to a frozen wasteland called Moose Creek (population just over 4000) in the Northwest Territories. It was "a godforsaken outpost to which no sane human being, least of all a doctor, would ever dream of going voluntarily." He retreated there after having made a serious medical error that left him shaken and remorseful. Sewell describes the offbeat men and women whom Dafydd encountered. One of them was Sheila Hailey, an arrogant nurse who mocked and criticized Dafydd at every opportunity.

"Ice Trap" has an intriguing premise and an original setting. Sewell expertly describes the challenges of staying alive in an Arctic town where the inhabitants must do battle with a forbidding climate that can bring about frostbite or even death. In Moose Creek, people drink too much, smoke heavily, and enter into sexual relationships with abandon, not worrying too much about the consequences of their rash behavior. The residents of this inhospitable place include Native Americans, blue collar workers, and misfits who cannot function in society.

When he later puts down roots in Wales, Dafydd hopes that he has left Moose Creek behind him forever. Unfortunately, the past and the present collide when Sheila sends him a letter in which she claims that he is the father of her thirteen-year-old twins. Dafydd is incredulous and outraged at this ridiculous allegation, but Isabel is all too prepared to believe the worst. This crisis will put a strain on Dafydd's already shaky marriage. He decides that he must return to Moose Creek to confront Sheila and meet the children whom she claims are his. This journey will force him to face some unpleasant truths about the past and make a number of hard decisions about the future.

Katie Sewell is an imaginative writer who has a gift for effectively depicting setting and capturing mood. She portrays Dafydd as an impulsive and often foolhardy individual who is redeemed by his capacity to love. However, many of the other characters lack depth and Sewell loses control of her plot in the second half of the book. She throws in far too many melodramatic and improbable elements that rob "Ice Trap" of its impact and believability. Still, this is a promising effort and it will be interesting to see where Sewell goes from here.

21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars this doesn't quite fly like it should...., February 6, 2008

By 

David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ice Trap: A Novel of Psychological Suspense (Hardcover)

Ice Trap never quite got off the ground, so to speak, for me. The basic idea (from the dust cover) that Dafydd Woodruff has children back in northern Canada that he's sure he didn't father sounds appealing. That DNA tests show the children are his provides complications that should yield an interesting mystery that you look forward to seeing solved--rather like the classic locked-room murders that John Dickson Carr and other writers are famous for. You know the murder occurred, and you know that you're going to enjoy seeing how it was done. So Ice Trap is like that, or should be like that.

After the first 40 or so pages I realized that I wasn't enjoying the book as much as I should. The characters weren't as believable as I would have liked, and how they responded to situations left me a bit uncomfortable. There are flashbacks to Woodruff's life at Moose Creek in Canada in 1992. The Canadian scenes are helpful to the book--in terms of a sense of place--they are well done. But the people seem unrealistic in ways. Later, Woodruff returns to Moose Creek to try to unravel the mystery. One of the twins insists he's her father, the other twin--a boy--insists that Woodruff is not his father. It seems a bit off-kilter, and it doesn't feel right. I found that I was curious about how the mystery would be solved, but not excited by it.

In retrospect, I think that having twins added unnecesary complications to the plot. I kept thinking about monozygotic/dizygotic identical/fraternal twins and DNA. If you have a male and a female (as in Ice Trap) the twins must be fraternal/dizygotic, and the chance of both having exactly the same DNA is negligible. I cannot recall anything being said in the book about whether there are two different DNA profiles, or whether Woodruff ever thinks about this. Having just one child rather than twins would have tightened things up considerably. There are also other potential holes in the plot--things that Woodruff should have looked at. If towards the end of the book as the veils begin to lift you look back at what happened earlier, some of the plot elements don't seem to make as much sense as they should have. So there are some good pieces here, but there are also some that are unsatisfying.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved this book!, July 1, 2008

By 

Jane E. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ice Trap: A Novel of Psychological Suspense (Hardcover)

THis book was a page turner from beginning to end. The dialogue was realistic and the characters were fascinatingly flawed. I loved the use of the arctic setting as well.

I cannot wait for Blood Print, the next thriller due out by this author!