I must admit that I'm a bit disappointed with the book. It got better towards the end, but 2/3 of the book felt like not much happened besides Ren interviewing people, funny banter between the cops and the agents, Ren sleeping with someone she shouldn't sleep with etc.

It just didn't happen so much to the case with the dead female FBI agent, until the very and I tell you the end is good really good because then something from Ren's past was revealed and I got an explanation for the very first chapter. So, thanks to the ending the rating went up, because then I got a clearer picture of Ren and it also finally reveal what had happened to the murdered FBI agent. I was also a bit sad because someone I like didn't make it, someone that didn't deserve to die.

But this book was just not as good as Harm’s Reach, it just lacked a really good story and I missed Ren's friend Janine that appeared in the book. I hope the next book is better and I hope to see Janine in if not the next book some book later on. ( )

After finding any number of excuses not to carry on reading, it finally dawned I should quit. Very weird plot and characters. ( )

Ren Bryce is the female FBI Agent put in charge of the investigation into the death of fellow agent Jean Transom whose body is discovered on the snow-covered mountains of Colorado. The body is subsequently lost in an avalanche but the investigation continues with Bryce heading up a team of agents and local law enforcement professionals in the small town of Breckenridge. Without a body or any easily identifiable reason for the death they must dig into Transom's background to find out what led to her death.

I ordered myself a copy of this book after hearing it discussed on Simon Mayo's Books Panel late last year. I don't remember what it was that the reviewers said that made me rush to Book Depository and I've long since deleted the podcast episode from my iPod. So I don't now know what they saw in the book but, whatever it was, completely passed me by.

Ren Bryce is immature, unprofessional, paranoid, whiny and completely unbelievable as an agent. Towards the end of the book a vague hint is made as to what might have possessed her to be an alcoholic who sleeps with all the wrong people but by then I no longer cared enough about her to forgive any of her foibles. I don't know if I'd have felt differently had she been given a better background earlier in the piece. The rest of the characters, of which there are far too many given the scant attention paid to most of them, are two-dimensional, near-misogynist men who are equally unbelievable in the roles cast for them.

The story is not much better. It drones on for nearly 500 meandering pages almost entirely devoid of plot development (90% of which happens in the first 50 pages and the last 75). The rest are full of introspective, paranoid ramblings by the protagonist that are so annoyingly out of context that what story threads do exist are easily dropped. Although ostensibly it's about the death of the FBI agent there's another crime badly wedged into the book to make it even more disjointed and complex. Apparently Ms Barclay doesn't write chronologically and, frankly, it shows.

I can't decide if this was a valiant, if failed, attempt to take the genre somewhere new or just plain bad. All I know is I didn't like it. At all. ( )

"Weiße Stille" ist ein ungemein raffiniert aufgebauter Thriller, den man am liebsten nicht mehr aus der Hand legen möchte, sobald man angefangen hat, zu lesen. Schauplatz der Handlung ist der Wintersportort Breckenridge in den Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Es geht um den Mord an der FBI-Agentin Jean Transom und dessen Aufklärung. Leiterin der Ermittlungen ist Ren Bryce, ebenfalls vom FBI. Ihre Ermittlungen werden zunächst einmal dadurch erschwert, dass die Tote, die hoch auf dem Quandaray Peak gefunden wurde, durch eine Lawine unauffindbar verschüttet wird. Erst der darauffolgende Sommer gibt die Leiche wieder preis und ermöglicht die Aufklärung des Falles durch Ren Bryce.

Dem Mord an Jean Transom geht eine geradezu bestialische Vorgeschichte voraus. Die Klärung dieser Vorgeschichte ist auf komplexe Weise mit einer weiteren Serie von Verbrechen verkettet, die teilweise auch noch von Ren Bryce quasi "nebenbei" aufgeklärt werden können.

"Weiße Stille" ist ein harter, äußerst spannender Krimi, der sich durch einige verblüffende Wendungen auszeichnet. Alex Barclay gelingt es, mittels ihrer knappen und ungemein treffenden sprachlichen Mittel eine authentische Atmosphäre zu schaffen. Geradezu genial, wie sie z. B. den Wintersportort Breckenridge darstellt, eine heruntergekommene Kneipe usw. Ihre zahlreichen Dialoge sind sehr lebendig und amüsant. Auch ihre Charaktere sind mit sparsamen Mitteln sehr gut gezeichnet, so dass man sie sich bestens einprägen kann, auch wenn sie gleich zu Anfang eine ganze Reihe von Personen vorstellt.

Am vielschichtigsten gezeichnet ist natürlich ihre Hauptfigur, FBI-Agentin Ren Bryce, die als ungemein tough, intelligent und impulsiv dargestellt wird. Dabei wird sie allerdings während ihrer Arbeit immer wieder von ihren eigenen Problemen und Selbstzweifeln eingeholt, die sie sich aber nicht unbedingt eingesteht. Diese Zwiespältigkeit, in Verbindung mit ihrem unbedingten Willen, den Mord aufzuklären und ihrer Menschlichkeit machen sie zu einer glaubwürdigen und sympathischen Protagonistin des Thrillers, der man den Erfolg bei der Klärung des Falles wünscht. ( )

I had never heard of Barclay and only after a very cursory check did I decide to go ahead and pick this one up. I was pleasantly surprised and glad I did. If I hadn't known that she was an Irish writer (that cursory check) I would have guessed she was American and probably Southern as well. Wicked sense of humor, and a really good storyteller to boot. The way Barclay describes the geographical locations enhances the story as it moves along at a fast but not guns a-blazing pace. Definitely not the typical FBI story here, and Ren is not the typical FBI agent, and the supporting cast of main and minor characters are charming, sometimes annoying, yet still believable. Oh, and there's a little twist at the end that you just don't see coming.
( )