Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen

Title: Ice Cold

Author: Tess Gerritsen

Series: Rizzoli & Isles (book #8)

Next in series: The Silent Girl

My rating: 4 Stars

Synopsis: At a medical examiners conference in Wyoming, Maura Isles decides to take an unexpected trip with an old college acquaintance and his friends. However, things take a dangerous turn when they find themselves snowbound in an abandoned village, and realize that someone is watching them. Days later, Jane Rizzoli is left with more questions than answers when she is informed of her friend’s death, and travels to Wyoming where horrifying revelations slowly come to light and Jane moves closer to discovering the truth about Maura’s fate.

Review: An intelligent if somewhat convoluted plot with quite a few twists and an unexpected ending.

Gerritsen is a skilled writer and is exceedingly adept at developing intriguing and complex characters. Maura’s characterization and development is a particularly good example of this. However, this skill also highlights one of the main problems in the book, namely the overabundance of new characters some of whom are introduced and well-detailed but suddenly disappear, and others who receive little attention and then become very important to the plot. In both instances, the reader is left with numerous unanswered questions.

While the story begins really well and has an interesting premise involving a cult and its apparently deserted compound, the pacing is all wrong. The plot fails to gain any real momentum until the last few chapters, at which point it progresses too rapidly and the conclusion feels rushed.

Overall, Ice Cold is a light and satisfying read with some tense and thrilling moments, however, I definitely prefer the books in which Rizzoli is the primary focus. My rating for this book wavered between 3.5 and 4 stars but ultimately settled at the latter because this series is immensely entertaining.