Reviews

Death in the Time of Ice by Kaye George

saranel81's review against another edition

1.0

I'm not sure why this is called a mystery. Yes, somebody is murdered, but there's hardly any investigating done, and the culprit is incredibly obvious from the moment the victim is found. Most of the book is spent on figuring out how the Neanderthals are going to survive the winter, which is a big enough problem because they are reluctant to hunt anything other than mammoth. These are picky Neanderthals who "detest" anything that's not meat and, up until they become desperate, seem to consider any animal smaller than a mammoth not worth their hunting time. Both of these problems (the mystery of the murdered leader and the need for food) are resolved by an act of nature, requiring very little effort from the characters themselves, which makes the ending feel less triumphant and more "well, I'm glad all that's over and done with."