Friday, December 13, 2013

FFB: Hot Freeze - Martin Brett


Montreal is a frigid violent world of illegal casinos luring gamblers to the barbotte and fan tan tables, brothels where the prostitutes serve as both companions and informers, and home to a wealthy dysfunctional family that would be all too familiar to Lew Archer or Philip Marlowe. The sexual imbroglio in the Astley/Remington household may call to mind the tawdriness of The Big Sleep or the family secrets that dominate Ross Macdonald's novels. But its the omnipresent, near paranormal influence of the wintry weather in Montreal becoming a formidable additional character almost as brutal as the human villains that reminds the reader he is far from the mean streets of California.

Mike is hired by Mrs. Remington to find out how her son Gerald is obtaining such a large amount of money. He receives an allowance but his ostentatious spending raises suspicions. He must be getting more money from some other source, she thinks. Mike soon learns that there are actually two families in the Remington home and that Mrs. Remington was previously married. Gerald and his sister Geraldine provide us the earliest examples of the unbridled sexuality that pervades the book.

Gerald is yet another of the handsome indiscriminate gay men, always flirting, always alluding, that one finds in 1950s private eye novels. It's his sex life that triggers the blackmail flag in Mike's mind as the possible source of the extra money. Geraldine is clearly a Carmen Sternwood knock-off but her insatiable taste for men eventually unearths a surprising facet to her character that all but erases any reminders of Chandler's teenage nympho. Then there's Marian, Mrs Remington's stepdaughter, who makes all too clear that she despises all of the Astleys and resents them living in her home.


Enter Tom Littleton, Mike's one time partner in the Mounties when they were both cops back in Winnipeg. Littleton is undercover as part of a narcotics investigation and he urges Mike to keep him that way by not mentioning his name. Mike in order to save his hide, however, lies about working with the RCMP and lets slip Littleton's name. When he returns later that night to find Littleton dead in the courtyard of his apartment building he is devastated. Up to this point Mike was all tough guy like many of the eyes of his day, but now we see a new side. A crowd of gawkers gather round the fence when Littleton's body is being taken away and Mike overhears them gossiping about another dead drunk who froze himself to death.



  1. Great to see your take on this old favourite, John. I'd never seen the back of the Popular Library edition. It's been some time since I've read it, so I'm wondering whether the scene depicted actually features in the book. Either way, degenerate or not, it's the first time I've ever seen a 19-year-old McGill student described as a "playboy".

    1. Could be that's Marian Remington in both illustrations. She visits Gafrin's seedy apartment and listens to Mozart records while waiting for him. But in the artwork a radio is substituted for the portable phonograph he owns. Is it her also on the rear cover? She goes to the casino with him and they have to leave when Astley's thugs show up. Poor Gerald is both a "degenerate" for being gay and a "playboy" for being a gambler who throws around money like its confetti.

  2. Interesting. Sounds like a very good book. A little up my ally. Thank you for sharing.

  3. New one on me (as I nearly always end up writing here John - it's all very humbling) - but sounds well out of the usual run of the genre - ta very much!