Review: Cold to the Touch: A Thriller by Kerri Hakoda

Alaska is the setting for Kerri Hakoda’s very good police procedural, Cold to the Touch: A Thriller. Anchorage, specifically, where it is deep in winter. For Homicide Detective DeHavilland Beans, the calm and serene morning of listening to an audiobook by the Dalai Lama is destroyed by a phone call. It is a Saturday morning, twelve days before Christmas, and the call regarding a dead body is jarring and upsetting for the man who is a Buddhist seeking karmic balance.

 

Cross county skiers first thought they a carcass of a moose buried under the falling snow. When they started seeing fabric at the mound behind some shrubs a few hundred yards off the municipal trail, they called for help.

 

When Detective Beans looks at the frozen body, he knows immediately who has been murdered, and left in the snow for animals to scavenge. Jolene Nilsson worked at a nearby coffee kiosk and one that the Detective Beans frequents. He had thought a lot about asking her out, as they had quite a bit in common, but he is 33 and she was 19. Going out with her never would have been right.

 

Any chance he ever had is gone as is her future.

 

The body is in bad shape. But, she clearly still has duct tape on her mouth. There is also nearby a single white rose. It seems obvious to Beans, the Medical Examiner, Chuckie Hefner, and others that she did not just wander out to the site and succumb to the elements. No, she was murdered, opened up for the animals to get to her, and then dumped by person or persons unknown.

 

It isn’t long before a second young woman is killed and she is not the last. As a pattern begins to emerge over the coming weeks, Beans is forced to work with Detective Ed Heller. Beyond the fact that Heller is old school and most likely believes, in Bean’s mind, that the biracial Beans got promoted due to his minority status, they just don’t get along.

 

Beyond the escalating case, Beans has things going on with family and friends. Some of it criminal, some of it personal, and all of them are bundled into various intriguing secondary storylines as the main one dealing with the murders goes forward over the next several weeks.

 

As the murders continue, and pressure from the media, citizens, etc., increases, Heller and Beans are on the hunt for the killer or killers that show no sign of stopping. Good thing the cops don’t either in Cold to the Touch: A Thriller by Kerri Hakoda.

 

This is a complicated and very good police procedural. The setting is rich, the characters in terms of Beans and others are complicated and interesting and the murders are a bit different than the normal run of the mill police procedural. The result is a complicated read that quickly pulls the reader into a far different world. A world that is hopefully the first installment of a series. Strongly recommended.

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3VuvKke

 

My ARC came from the publisher, Crooked Lane Books, via NetGalley with no expectation of a review.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2024