COLD FIRE

A routine search for a fugitive from justice turns into an equally routine shoot’em-up for private eye Tess Grey and her friends.

Although Tess is officially attached to the Portland, Maine, district attorney's office, Det. Karen Ratcliffe of the Belchertown PD wants her to get on the trail of Joanne Mason, a nanny accused of murdering her employer and her charges in West Roxbury. The case is more than personal to Karen because Jo is her sister, and Karen wants to make sure she’s apprehended without being hurt. Tess, her partner and fiance, Nicolas “Po” Villere, and Po’s friend Jerome “Pinky” Leclerc, a former criminal reformed and relocated to New England, soon realize that their quest is both more complicated and more dangerous than it seemed. It’s not just that Jo, an unusually resourceful fugitive, is determined to cross over into Canada in the middle of a blizzard; the real problem is that Tess and company aren’t the only people looking for her. Bruce Harper and Siobhan Doyle, her other pursuers, have a lot fewer scruples about how they track Jo down or who gets hurt along the way. The weather gets worse and worse; Jo comes close to freezing to death; and just as Kate and her mates catch up with her, Harper and Doyle, whose real target represents the one and only surprise here, catch up with them. Hilton works up to a furious pace, and exactly the right people end up dead along with the requisite collateral casualties.

Hot conflicts rage in the freezing cold.