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
No comments:
Post a Comment