Jenn's Review: Ice Cold

Summary: In Wyoming for a medical conference, Boston medical examiner Maura Isles joins a group of friends on a spur-of-the-moment ski trip. But when their SUV stalls on a snow-choked mountain road, they’re stranded with no help in sight.

As night falls, the group seeks refuge from the blizzard in the remote village of Kingdom Come, where twelve eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned. Something terrible has happened in Kingdom Come: Meals sit untouched on tables, cars are still parked in garages. The town’s previous residents seem to have vanished into thin air, but footprints in the snow betray the presence of someone who still lurks in the cold darkness—someone who is watching Maura and her friends.

Days later, Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli receives the grim news that Maura’s charred body has been found in a mountain ravine. Shocked and grieving, Jane is determined to learn what happened to her friend. The investigation plunges Jane into the twisted history of Kingdom Come, where a gruesome discovery lies buried beneath the snow. As horrifying revelations come to light, Jane closes in on an enemy both powerful and merciless—and the chilling truth about Maura’s fate.

Review: As I mentioned in Tuesday's post, I've read Tess Gerritsen before, but this is the first time I've read anything from her Rizzoli & Isles series. Now I have to go back and read the rest! I usually don't like to start in the middle of a series, but I had no trouble jumping right in and becoming thoroughly immersed in the lives of the characters.

Maura is clinical about everything in her life, except perhaps love. But it seems that every time she does go out on a limb and take a gamble, it's the wrong gamble ~ and worse still, it's for the wrong reasons. This is how Maura ends up stranded in a snowed in valley with four people she barely knows. To make matters worse, it is obvious that something went terribly wrong at the cult housing... and there is evidence to suggest that they aren't alone out there.

Gerritsen is a masterful story teller and her plot has lots of twists and turns, one of which, in particular, I should have seen coming, and yet another of which took me completely by surprise. Like Dan Brown, she's not afraid to kill off characters, and she dose so without trepidation, giving her stories a realistic, albeit chilling, ring of truth. When the case is wrapped, it is done without bending the plot to a preconceived notion of how the story should end... it is satisfying yet open ended enough to leave room for new characters to return and old ones to reemerge. (I actually had to google one of the characters from the previous book after reading the last page because the last few paragraphs seemed ominous without context.)

I am thrilled at finding another series to delve into, even though my TBR pile is towering precariously on my desk as I type. Gerritsen is fast becoming one of my favorite authors and I hope the TV series* based on these books does her justice. (This book will be in stores July 27, 2010.)

*See my previous post for more details

Final Take: 4.5/5