Sequel to [book:Learning to Swim|8736390], the author takes the reader to a small community in upstate New York where athletes come to hone their winter sport skills. Saranac Lake is the center of the novel, almost as a character, it looms over the story and worms into the reader's mind as the plot unfolds. Troy Chance, once a sports writer now does free lance. As the story begins, she is photograhing the building of the annual ice castle when workers halt, staring at each other. Seeing what they see, a body in the ice, she realises that it is someone she knows, Tobin, a close friend to her roommate.
The editor of the local newspaper asks Troy to write about the death and follow it with a three part series about the deceased, son of a wealthy couple. Key question is how did the young man come to be in the lake and why did he die. Troy discovers his death isn't the only mystery about Tobin and the story unfolds slowing layer by layer as she reports about him as a child, then a young man and finally how he came to be here in this place at this time. Suspence builds as peoplee speculates how and why he died, including Troy and her roommates, one of whom becomes a suspect. Characters are so well developed one can understand how they relate to each other and how they think. Rumor abounds from an statement written by a new reporter whose work Troy must counter with the truth. Sso well crafted and enticing, I could not put this read aside until I finished.
