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ICE COLD (AUDIO)
by Tess Gerritson, read by Tanya Eby
Brilliance Audio, June 2010
Unabridged pages
$36.99
ISBN: 1423392051


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In the opening chapter the author describes the wedding of a thirteen year old girl to a cult leader, giving the reader a hint of what might be coming in the book. Then the events of the story begin to unfold. Pathologist Maura Isles is attending a conference in Wyoming. She meets an old friend who invites her to join him, his daughter, and two others to drive to a resort for a day of skiing. They start out in a terrible snow storm and lose their way. Trying to turn around, they slide off the road. Stranded they notice a sign on a narrow lane warning that only residents are allowed. Thinking that must mean houses, they go down the road. What they find is a series of houses, identical, all abandoned, some with food still on the table. Maura's friend Jane Rizzoli, back in Boston, realizes she is missing and rushes to Wyoming to help find her. There are surprises and twists ahead with powerful suspense gripping the listener.

Gerritsen has always been quite graphic, especially about medical procedures, and this book is certainly no exception. Listening to it, rather than reading it oneself, makes it even more graphic and explicit because you cannot skim over the parts you don't want to hear.

The story is well told and achieves the purpose of keeping the reader engrossed and enthralled in the events. Chapters frequently end with Isles in great danger and then we switch to Rizzoli insisting that Maura is still alive. The discs come to an end at highly suspenseful moments. This kept me ensnared. I was listening even when I had to do necessary household chores. Just when the listener thinks the situation cannot get any worse, it does. And just when the listener thinks she has it all figured out, she realizes she doesn't.

The two main characters, Maura and Jane, were fairly well fleshed out but most of the secondary characters were pretty stereotypical. The woman-distrusting small town sheriff, the eccentric old rancher, the shrill social worker all play a part in the story. Probably the most appealing and completely realized character is a sixteen year old boy who calls himself Rat. Gerritson got him exactly right and made him, a rebel for a very good reason, very sympathetic. His dog, Bear, is pretty wonderful too.

If the listener stopped to think, much of the wilderness survival seems somewhat improbable. A teenage boy and a middle-aged woman are surviving what trained men might not endure. But even listening there really isn't time to think as the suspense ratchets up and up and it isn't until the book is finished that the listener has any doubts.

The reader was reasonably satisfactory. She did not try to portray the different people too dramatically but it was easy to tell which character was talking. The only thing that bothered me about her was that she fell into a singsong reading from time to time.

All told this was a very enjoyable book to listen to. It is a different experience from reading a book and one which I enjoy very much. You hear many things you might miss in the written version. And I don't think the listener loses anything in the different format.

§ Sally Fellows is a retired history teacher with a M.A. in history and an avid reader of mysteries.

Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, July 2010

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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