Thin Ice

Bill Kemp #3

by Michael Davies

It was a simple errand. Collect a package. Save the world.

‘Part James Bond, part Philip Marlowe, and all hero’—Jeffrey Deaver

It was a simple job, they just collect a package in Vienna. But when Bill Kemp’s contact washes up dead on the frozen banks of the Danube, where the Iron Curtain falls across the map of Europe, he’s thrown into the heart of a dangerous conspiracy that threatens to destabilise the continent. As winter closes in and Kemp faces a treacherous expedition across the Alps to Switzerland, his introduction to the dark world of espionage proves as deadly as the bleak, beautiful mountains.

This original tale of spies, danger and death in Cold War Austria features investigator Bill Kemp, who first appeared in Desmond Bagley’s Domino Island and its enthralling sequel Outback, and affirms Steel Dagger nominee Michael Davies as a rising star in the crime/thriller genre.

Genres: Thriller, Mystery

313 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 24, 2024

About the author

Michael Davies is an award-winning writer of books, plays, TV and more.

Reviews

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bill Kemp was frustrated and annoyed. The phone call had said they had one of his friends, and he had to do what they said if Bill wanted her to survive. He checked the university where she was studying, but was told she'd gone to Boston. She wasn't answering her phone. When the voice called back, telling him he had a flight booked out of Heathrow to Vienna, Bill knew he had no choice but to go.

When Bill met with a young woman named Anna, he noticed she seemed nervous and frightened. When she passed him a napkin with SOS scrawled on it, as she left, he wasn't sure how to help her. Instructions were coming thick and fast, and when Bill arrived for a meeting, in the snowy cold at the edge of the Danube River, with the Soviets and their barbed wire just across the way, he stayed hidden. But horror caught his throat when he saw the Viennese police pull Anna - obviously dead - from the frozen river. His capture minutes later didn't bode well...

Thin Ice is the 3rd and final in the Bill Kemp trilogy by Michael Davies and I enjoyed it very much. Starting with Desmond Bagley's Domino Island (a manuscript discovered long after his death), Michael worked with Bagley's family, releasing #2, Outback (set in Australia) and now this one, #3, Thin Ice. I hope the author has more up his writerly sleeve, as I'd be keen to keep reading books by him. Bill Kemp is an excellent character, not the sort of person to be involved in espionage. Highly recommended.

With thanks to NetGalley & HarperCollins for my digital ARC to read and review.

[Leah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bill Kemp gets an anonymous phonecall from a man who tells him that a friend of Kemp’s is missing and that he must obey instructions if she is to come back alive and well. The first instruction is that he is to fly to Vienna and await further orders. He does so, and soon gets mixed up in something that puts him in danger from the Austrian police and makes him the target, it seems, of the Czech security forces on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

The secret of a good action thriller is the balance between the story, the characters and the action. In this one, by the 40% mark where I gave up, we know no more of the story than I have indicated in my paragraph above, and we learned most of that in the first few pages. No characters other than Bill get more than a couple of lines devoted to them, and they’re pretty much all caricatured thuggish police and security officers, on both sides of the Curtain. There is certainly plenty of action – in fact, it’s all action, interspersed every few paragraphs by Bill wondering (as was I) what he’d got involved in and why he had been selected for whatever this mission was. He is, after all, an insurance investigator – or was, at least, a couple of books ago. Surely the secret services of all countries have actual agents they can get to do whatever their dirty work is? Maybe it would all become clear in time, but too late for me, I fear. I shall leave Bill tramping through the snow, dodging baddies and bullets, as he seems to have been doing for most of the book so far.

A pity – I’ve enjoyed the previous two books in the series, but they both had interesting stories and a group of characters to get to know. This one, up to the 40% mark anyway, only has action.

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[Georgina Candy · Rating 4 out of 5]

All action from the offset, I got straight into this one and read most of it in one day. The action carried on throughout and seemed to just follow Bill everywhere. He gets a phone call to go save a friend of his by going wherever he’s taken and collecting a package in exchange for them. But as usual, simple plans end up being anything but.

Soon things are totally out of control, there seems to be someone trying to kill him at every turn and nothing makes sense - why is he being targeted?

A really good book for fans of Jack Reacher type stories. I did think there was a lot of build up for a very quick end but this didn’t spoil the rest of the book thankfully. Will be looking out for the next one for sure.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again, Michael Davies has delivered a terrific thriller. After surviving the Australian desert in his last adventure, Outback, the hero Bill Kemp finds himself at the heart of the Cold War in the 1970s, up against spies, assassins and the dramatic scenery of the Austrian Alps as he tries to prevent an international disaster. The locations are once again brilliantly drawn and there’s loads of tension and thrills as the book races to its exciting conclusion. A real page-turner!

[Ellie (bookmadbarlow) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third and what I think is the final book is this centenary series was a wild ride. More far fetched than the previous books, but no less enjoyable.
Bill Kemp, ex insurance investigator, is dragged into a game of spies and espionage and battles against at points unknown enemies in Vienna.
Fast paced and along the lines of Jack Reacher in character, so of you enjoy those ex army tough man books, like I do, you will also enjoy these.
Worth picking up for some quick and exciting reading.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both me and my dad have been looking forward to Thin Ice. We love Bill Kemp and really enjoyed seeing him in the world of Cold War spies. I don’t want to give anything away but this is my favourite of the trilogy and once again I love the strong female characters that you don’t usually get in this type of book. Well done Michael Davies - we hope there are lots more Bill Kemp adventures to come!

[Maddy Kerr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous storytelling!

Mr Davies has done it again! The character development of his engaging hero, coupled with a tense plot and pictorial precision in portraying the wide variety of locations has culminated in a terrific and gripping read. Can’t wait for the return of Bill Kemp….

[michelle Simons · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this fast paced thriller. It definitely has James Bond vibes although not exactly the same. It is very clever and set in several different locations. This is well worth a read.

[Denis Wheller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bill Kemp is not the mild mannered Insurance Investigator he appears to be. With a background in the military and a recent series of hair-raising adventures, he is trying to be relaxed in his job. Phone calls from suspicious sounding characters are not exactly strangers to his life. However, the call he takes one morning in January 1975 is more troublesome, since it leads him to the knowledge that a friend has been ‘disappeared’ by the caller, or his organisation. To preserve her safety, all he has to do is travel to Vienna (tickets, hotel reservations, transport, funds are all covered) and there collect a package, details to be supplied, from someone? who turns out to be Anna Stern. Sneaking through the snow clad woods to the deserted spot on the Danube to which she has directed him, he is in time to see her body being dragged from the river, and to note that, just across the river, the Iron Curtain is clearly visible in the form of barbed wire and military defences forming the border with Czechoslovakia. Still processing what he’s seeing, Bill is discovered and arrested by the Austrian State Police. Who arranged this? What was the package? Who killed Anna? How can he explain he doesn’t know anything? What will happen to his ‘disappeared’ friend? What will happen to him? Lots of questions to be resolved.
As I believe I’ve noted before, getting someone to be a covert agent is a weak way to get our hero into a tricky situation where his surprising abilities will win out. However, the idea has a long history, for example the start point for Desmond Bagley’s novel “Running Blind”. I choose this example because this novel is the third in a series where Davies attempts to recreate Bill Kemo, one of Bagley’s heroes. In the 1970s and 80s, Begley was a very successful writer of thrillers, using a variety of heroes (I remember reading some of his work at the time). However, he had dropped out of sight (he doesn’t feature in any of the lists of thriller authors I have looked at) until Davies revised and published one of the many drafts he had left at the time of his death. Nothing wrong with producing new stories about old heroes, of course, but they have to be more than just pastiche, and more importantly they have to reach a modern audience. There has to be the famous ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ and I feel that, here, that suspension is stretched too far. Firstly, none of the characters seem real. I can cope with the idea that Bill might go along with the original request (it is 1975, after all, the height of the Cold War), but most of the opening section seems unlikely, and a bit spun-out. However, once the actual story starts to unroll, it is one highly improbable event after another, a sub-Bond chase (think the precredit bit of “For Your Eyes Only” and any of the Lake Garda chases). As text, this is just not very exciting, although on film it would be good. So I applaud the idea but was disappointed with the execution.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

[Aravind · Rating 3 out of 5]

My NetGalley review of Thin Ice appears here: https://www.netgalley.co.uk/book/4167...

Thin Ice by Michael Davies, the third Bill Kemp adventure, sees the former insurance investigator thrust into the lethal world of Cold War espionage, with the possibility of another world war hinged on his survival against a vicious assassin.

Amidst his semi-retired leisure in Dartmouth, Bill receives an anonymous call that a woman whom he used to care for has been kidnapped, and her well-being lies in Bill's following some simple instructions. Without attempting to contact the police, Bill has to travel to Vienna and collect a package. But things don't go as planned, and Bill gets arrested for murder by the Viennese police before being captured by someone from the other side of the Iron Curtain, torturing him for information he doesn't have. Without any clue about what is happening and why, Bill employs all his resourcefulness to keep himself out of captivity while trying to make sense of the happenings. The truth turns out to be his worst nightmare in which he has become the target of a ruthless killer and has no choice but to charge through the winter snowscape of the Austrian and Swiss Alps to put the threat to his life away for good and save the world while he is at it.

Strong and resourceful but naïve and principled, Bill is a fine character, and I enjoyed his adventure in the Australian Outback the last time. Created by the underrated master of action thrillers Desmond Bagley, Bill Kemp's character has been shaped by Michael Davies agreeably. After the intriguing first chapter, the plot begins to drag despite all the action and tension, and the story is as incomprehensible to the reader as to the protagonist. When the secret gets cleared up, what follows is fairly straightforward. Though the action and the landscape are described in vivid detail, the story becomes farfetched, making the reader feel disconnected. Compared to Outback, Thin Ice’s core feels weak and simplistic as the long-drawn buildup of the first half fizzles out. The other characters, especially the females, are well-developed, though the same can’t be said about Bill’s handlers.

While Thin Ice has plenty of action and a solid hero, its farfetched plot and the predictable climax make it somewhat less satisfactory, especially compared to Outback.

I am thankful to HarperCollins UK for the Digital Review Copy of Thin Ice through NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review.

[Paromjit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thus is Michael Davies picking up a character originally created by an author many of you might be familiar with, thriller writer Desmond Bagley. You might have encountered Bill Kemp in Domino Island, this is the third outing, it has Kemp at his Devon home when he receives a sinister phone call, which results in him being manipulated and forced to fly to Vienna where he is instructed to collect a parcel. Totally in the dark as to what the package might be, he is awaiting further instructions, and rather than twiddling his thumbs at the hotel, he goes out and plays being a tourist in the famous city, accompanied by his thoughts of the well known atmospheric film set in the city, The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed and starring Orson Welles, with its memorably haunting soundtrack.

It does not take long for him to realise that he is being followed by a man in a homburg hat, a tail he puts a lot of effort into trying to lose, particularly when he has a meeting in a cafe with Anna Stern, with whom arrangements are made to meet again. Unfortunately, the meeting, on the banks of a river, next to the Iron Curtain's Czechoslovakia, does not turn out as planned, with Kemp ending up being arrested by the Austrian police. His nightmare continues into surprising and deadly territory, as he ends up having to rely on skills he had learnt during his military training as he fights for his life. Still having no clue as to what is going on, he finds himself bumping into an old friend he last saw in Australia, Kenny Hines.

As Kemp learns more, he finds little is as it appears, he himself is a target, on a dangerous mission to France, having to cross the beautiful but lethal mountains, in this tense and dark Cold War era narrative of conspiracy and espionage, will he live to tell the tale? This is engaging historical storytelling of a turbulent time when there was little trust between the Soviet Union and the West. This will appeal to readers interested in this time period, the fears, and the heavy reliance on intelligence and espionage by both sides, and to those who might have enjoyed Bagley's original novels, or those who simply enjoy a good thriller. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

[Henry Dawe · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a talent for all things gripping!

If you enjoyed 'Domino Island', an unfinished Desmond Bagley thriller excellently curated to conclusion by Michael Davies, and 'Outback', the fine second outing for the protagonist Bill Kemp, you will not fail to be transported by Davies' trilogy-completing 'Thin Ice', especially as there is plenty of travel along the way.

Davies has, for the third time, proven his tremendous capacity to draw the reader into a story and never to let go. It is all too easy to underestimate the amount of work and sheer brain power which go into writing a novel: all the directions worked out painstakingly in the writer's mind; the unexpected turns along the way; the seemingly effortless yet actually hard-won flow of the language.

In 'Thin Ice' Davies has mastered these skills to take the reader on an exhilarating, if chilly, European journey involving a character which this reader at least had never encountered before: a triple agent! Fans of Davies’ hero Desmond Bagley and newcomers to Davies’ work in extending Bagley’s legacy will not fail to find this book engrossing.

[John Thurlbeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleased to receive an ARC of this spy thriller and am grateful to Net Galley and the publisher for it.

Building on a character first created by Desmond Bagley, the hero Bill Kemp finds himself at the heart of the Cold War in the 1970s, up against spies, assassins and the dramatic scenery of the Austrian Alps, as he tries to prevent an international disaster, at times almost unwillingly and, to a degree, unwittingly

Davies has a wonderful knack of using locations that are brilliantly drawn and there’s loads of tension and thrills as the book races to its exciting conclusion. They set the backdrop to a fast-paced story that makes you feel out of control, as there seems to be someone trying to kill Kemp at every turn and nothing seems to makes sense.

It makes for a good book, though I did, at times, find some of the writing a little prosaic, and I just wanted the story to move on! However, overall, the twists and turns kept me intrigued.

For those that like a good spy thriller, I am sure you will love the Bill Kemp character and his associates.

[Steve Cripwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

But when Bill Kemp’s contact washes up dead on the frozen banks of the Danube, where the Iron Curtain falls across the map of Europe, he’s thrown into the heart of a dangerous conspiracy that threatens to destabilise the continent.
With winter closing in and enemies on all sides, Kemp must risk a daring expedition across the Austrian Alps to Switzerland.

I struggled with this novel. Whilst it’s very well written, I found much of the story too contrived. I haven’t read the previous books in the series and I think that shows as if feels like great backstory gaps are missing. It’s very James Bond without the tongue-in-cheek humour. For me it just didn’t work.

[Carol Butler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thin Ice a novel roundabout the 1970's cold war time, and Bill Kemp was to pick up a package off of Ann Stern but the route he took to get there without being seen or followed was what I would have thought for a more experience spy not a novice but things did not turn out as they were suppose too, and he ended up on the wrong side of Austria behind the Iron Curtain. and Anna dead.?
I'm afraid this book did not work out for me, although I did finish it, and it seems as if Bill Kemp is always at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I would like to thank NetGalley and HarperCollins for an ARC copy to read.

[Rudrashree Makwana · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book has been narrated by the author. The narrative was suspenseful and tense. It gave me all the feels of the book. Author’s writing is gripping. Expect the unexpected, murder, twists, conspiracy, secrets and mystery. The book transported me to the book setting. Everything that was happening with the characters was frightening. Bill Kemp was told that he must do whatever they say to survive. He was a part of bigger conspiracy and he must find a way out of the dark world of espionage. Anna’s character was intriguing. The ending was so unpredictable

This is the third book. You must read the first book atleast. Thanks to the Publisher

[Karina Bjerke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great read. After thoroughly enjoying the last two Bill Kemp novels I must say Michael Davies has done it again. A whole new world - all these books can be read stand alone - and once again a truly convincing one. The way Bill keeps his integrity in these situations and not by super hero powers but by quick thinking is just great. It was the same kind of page turner with the excitement but I really enjoyed the Cold War setting. Looking forward to the next one!

[Gee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read the previous book by this author, Outback, I was interested to see how the character would develop next. Bill Kemp was originally a creation of Desmond Bagley, and whilst he is an interesting character, the book feels a bit dated. It is well written, and has an okay storyline. However, it didn’t work for me and I just wasnt invested in the character. Not the one for me this time.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[Neville Townsend · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good cold war thriller from the mind of Desmond Bagley and the pen of Michael Davies. Though I've not read the first two in this series I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Plenty of twist and turns. Good characters and locations. I don't know if there will be any more Bill Kemp adventures but if so I'll be reading them. Thanks to Harpercollins and Netgalley for this review ARC.

[David Crosby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book, plenty of action, a quick read. It carries on the Bill Kemp character from the previous book while remaining standalone. There's a need to suspend belief here and there, but only in a James Bond way, nothing outrageous. Less barking dingoes than I would have expected, but plenty of snow. Recommended.

[Julius Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thin Ice was an absolutely gripping read from start to finish. What begins as a simple job quickly turns into a tense Cold War thriller full of danger, twists, and atmosphere. The icy Austrian setting is vividly described, and Bill Kemp is a strong, believable lead. The pacing kept me hooked throughout. A thrilling, well written spy novel and an easy five-star read.

[Shalini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it’s the spy genre that I found I’m not really fond of, but this book wasn’t really my cup of tea. It is well written and set in exotic locations and has some thrills and twists. But overall this book did not really engage me.

[Jackie Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Davies has gone and done it again!
Thin Ice is the 3rd book in the (Bill Kemp) series.
With enemies on all sides, Kemp must risk a daring expedition across the Austrian Alps to Switzerland. Fast paced with an unexpected plot twist!
A must read on a cosy winters night in!

[Patricia Moren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating spy thriller. Some committed to spying, danger and death, others reluctant participants. Non stop action and a totally unexpected conclusion.

[Ruth Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the other two Bill Kemp books but this one didn't work for me.