Excerpt from The Frozen Dead by Bernard Minier, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Heedless of the falling snow, she unfolded the map. The buildings of the holiday camp were designated by three little rectangles. She gauged the approximate distance she had come, following the winding thread of the départementale road. Two more rectangles appeared slightly further along; they met in the shape of a T, and although there were no indications as to the nature of the buildings, it could hardly be anything else, for the road came to an end at that point, and there were no other symbols on the map.

She was almost there . . .

She turned round, walked as far as the parapet – and saw them. Further upstream, on the opposite shore, higher up on the slope: two long stone buildings. In spite of the distance she could tell how huge they were. A giant's architecture. The same Cyclopean style that was everywhere in the mountains, be it power plants or dams or hotels from an earlier century. That's what it was: the lair of a Cyclops. Except that there is not just one Polyphemus deep inside that cave – there are several.

Diane wasn't the type to be easily daunted; she had often travelled to places where tourists were warned not to go; since adolescence she had taken up sports that entailed a certain amount of risk. As a child and then an adult she had always had a taste for adventure. But something about the view there before her made her stomach lurch. It wasn't a question of physical risk. No, it was something else. A leap into the unknown . . .

She took out her mobile and dialled. She didn't know whether there would be a mast in the area to relay her call, but after three rings a familiar voice replied.

'Spitzner here.'

Her sense of relief was instantaneous. His warm, firm, calm voice had always been able to soothe her and banish her doubts. It was Pierre Spitzner – her mentor in the department – who had first got her interested in forensic psychology. An intensive SOCRATES course on children's rights had brought her closer to this discreet, charming man, devoted husband and father of seven children. The famous psychologist had taken her under his wing in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences; he had enabled the chrysalis to become a butterfly – even if such an image would undoubtedly have seemed far too conventional to Spitzner's demanding mind.

'It's Diane. Am I disturbing you?'

'Of course not. How is it going?'

'I'm not there yet . . . I'm on the road . . . I can see the Institute from here.'

'Is something wrong?'

Good old Pierre. Even over the telephone he could tell from the slightest shift in her voice.

'No, everything's fine. It's just that . . . their aim was to isolate these guys from the outside world. They've stuck them in the most sinister, remote place they could find. This valley gives me goosebumps . . .'

She was immediately sorry she'd said that. She was behaving like an adolescent left to her own resources for the first time – or a frustrated student in love with her supervisor and doing everything she could to attract his attention. She told herself he must be wondering how she'd manage to cope if the mere sight of the buildings was causing her to panic.

'Come on,' he said. 'You've already seen your fair share of paranoids and schizophrenics and sex offenders, right? Tell yourself that it won't be any different there.'

'They weren't all murderers. In fact, only one of them was.'

His image sprang to mind: a thin face, irises the colour of honey staring at her with a predator's greed. Kurtz was a genuine sociopath. The only one she had ever met. Cold, manipulative, unstable. Not a trace of remorse. He had raped and killed three mothers; the youngest was forty-six and the eldest seventy-five. That was his thing, mature women. Not to mention the ropes, ties, gags, slipknots . . . Every time she struggled not to think about him, he would settle into her consciousness, with his ambiguous smile and wildcat gaze. This reminded her of the sign Spitzner had nailed to the door of his office: 'Don't think of an elephant.'

Excerpted from The Frozen Dead by Bernard Minier. Copyright © 2014 by Bernard Minier. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Minotaur. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.