Ice cold (novel)
Eiskalt (Original title: Stone Cold ) is a youth novel by the Englishman Robert Swindells , which was published in 1993. The focus of the plot is the 16-year-old Link , who ran away from home and is now homeless , and the 47-year-old Shelter , who wants to clean the streets of London from homeless people by luring them into his house and killing them.
The novel won the Carnegie Medal and the Sheffield Book Awards in 1993 and is now used occasionally as school reading. It was also filmed in a short television series by Stephen Whittaker in 1997 and broadcast on the BBC .
action
Robert Swindells Eiskalt reports in first-person form alternately on the actions and experiences of two people who call themselves Link and Shelter . Only in the last chapter do both stories come together. Shelter's chapters are headed with Daily Routine Orders , left chapters have no headings.
16-year-old Link (his real name is not given), born on March 20, 1977 in Bradford , Yorkshire , is saddened that his biological father has abandoned his family. Two years later, his mother, who was always a housewife, has a new partner, Vince. Vince is in his 50s and is in the midst of a midlife crisis . Link and his sister Carole don't get along with him at all, and the mother is too shy to appease the situation. Carole moves out after an incident with Vince and lives with her partner Chris from then on . Link, who only achieved a moderate school leaving certificate, soon leaves his home, but he has no place of refuge. He lingers on the streets of Bradford for a while until, after meeting the family at Christmas and on St. Stephen's Day, he decides to travel to London to start over there.
Meanwhile, a 47-year-old ex-sergeant in the London borough of Camden is making plans to clean the streets of London from the homeless. For this purpose he adopted the name Shelter . Shelter served in the British Army well into his 40s, training young recruits to become soldiers. However, he was dismissed from the service for unspecified "medical reasons" - reasons that he does not want to accept. He considers the homeless and junkies to be garbage, so he thinks that it is a service to society to clean up this garbage. He calls this "recruiting" for the "Camden Horizontals" winning. Since his act is not covered by the official law, he tries to proceed with sophisticated methods so as not to arouse suspicion. Obsessed with this idea, he buys z. B. a cat that he baptizes Sappho so that it should appear to others as if he were really a nice, humanistically educated person. He plans his procedures down to the last detail and even studies different types of smiles.
Link cannot find work or affordable housing in London and is soon forced to live on the streets with no further opportunities. He realizes how hard, cold and brutal this is. By chance he meets Ginger (because of his red hair, his real name is not mentioned), who is significantly nicer and more helpful than the other homeless people. They move on together and Ginger shows Link how to survive on the street. They go begging every day and spend the night in doorways. Once they spend the night with Captain Hook (his real name is Probyn), who owns six boats on which up to 240 homeless people can spend the night for a fee every day.
In the meantime, Shelter is carrying out his plans by visiting a homeless person at different places at night and then luring him into his house with various pretenses, where he kills him. In order to reduce the risk of his discovery, he tries not to leave a recurring pattern in his actions and therefore among his victims there are white and black men and women. In order not to leave any traces, he keeps the corpses in a cavity under his living room floor, where they do not rot as quickly due to the coolness and the draft . He gives his "recruits" military haircuts and boots and arranges them according to size.
One day he also runs into Ginger and Link who are begging. Shelter doesn't give them anything but an insulting answer. As he walks on, he thinks he can hear them both laughing. He does not want to let this sit on him and resolves to make the two his victims. One day Ginger leaves Link for a while because he wants to meet his friends. On this occasion, before he can return to Link, Shelter can lure him into his house and kill him by lying that he hit Link.
Link is devastated after the disappointment that Ginger apparently no longer wants to return to him and shortly afterwards meets Gail (her real name is Louise Bain), the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, although she is also homeless. Newly arrived on the streets of London, Gail asks Link to show her how to survive on the streets. Link no longer wants to bond with people, but he remembers how Ginger helped him and is too in love to refuse the request.
When Shelter tries to catch Link, he discovers that Link has a new partner again, namely Gail, which makes his action difficult. But he does not give up this plan and in the meantime looks for easier prey.
By chance, Link and Gail learned some time later that an elderly man had been observed several times with homeless people, and also that they went into a house with him and were never seen again afterwards. They learn from Nick , a homeless magazine seller, that Ginger was last seen with this man. Link and Gail try to report their growing suspicions to a police station, but the police officers who visit Shelter in his house to clarify the allegations are very cleverly deceived by Shelter and do not investigate the matter further.
Link and Gail then watch Shelter's house on their own, waiting to catch him red-handed. But Gail leaves Link in between because she still wants to take care of private matters. The two fight because Link thinks that she wants to call her sister again and that she is very wasteful with the little money. As Link continues to watch Shelter, he finally thinks he realizes that Shelter can't be a murderer, because he looks very ordinary and is very affectionate to his cat. Link goes to Shelter's house after Shelter has seen and invited him. In the house, Shelter suddenly attacks him, shows him his seven recruits and wants to kill him too. After a hard fight, the police, who were summoned by Gail, appear in time and arrest Shelter.
Gail reveals herself to Link as a reporter who only wanted to research what it is like to live on the street. Link is disappointed again: his love leaves him and even a mass murderer has a better fate than him - with free accommodation and good food for life. He then decides to leave the borough of Camden, as it only binds him to bad memories.
criticism
"A gripping read."
"A fascinating read."
"This book should be included in every children's library."
"This book should be on every child's bookshelf."
expenditure
- R. Swindells: Stone Cold. Penguin Books Ltd, London 1995, ISBN 978-0-14-036251-0 , 132 pages.
- R. Swindells: Stone Cold. Klett English Editions, Ernst Klett Sprachen GmbH, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-12-578145-0 , 112 pages.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ R. Swindells: Stone Cold. Penguin Books, London 1995, ISBN 978-0-14-036251-0 , pp. I
- ↑ abipur.de: homework archive. Retrieved August 25, 2016 .
- ^ IMDb.com: Stone Cold (1997). Retrieved August 25, 2016 .