Marilyn's Mystery Reads

When Detective Casey Duncan and her husband Sheriff Eric Dalton founded Haven’s Rock as a place of sanctuary deep in the Yukon forest, they hoped to improve upon Rockton, the place where they met years earlier.  Rockton had also been envisioned as a place of safety for those wanting to leave their horrific pasts behind, but over the years things there had changed, and it was no longer fulfilling that need.

Thus Casey and Eric, with the financial help of an heiress who supports their project, established Haven’s Rock.  Now a town of sixty-seven adults and two children, Haven’s Rock is even more remote than Rockton, and it has the additional benefit of virtually unlimited financial resources.  But it still has dangers from its residents, carefully vetted as they are.

Casey and Eric are awakened shortly after midnight by Sebastian, a member of the community.  He tells them that Kendra, another resident, was attacked and dragged into the forest but managed to escape her assailant.  Kendra tells Casey that she had two drinks at the Roc, the town’s only restaurant, one over her usual limit, and that on her way home she felt dizzy and tipsy. She was trying to put her key in her front door when she was hit twice from behind and dragged through the snow into the woods.  Sebastian heard her screams, found her, and carried her back to the settlement.

The consensus is that Kendra’s drink was drugged, and it is pure luck that she was rescued.  Now Casey and Eric must find the assailant before he/she strikes again.  Finding the person who put something in Kendra’s drink is made more difficult by the fact that she was sitting with two other women at the Roc, and their drinks had been left on the bar’s counter for a minute or two before being taken to their table.  Was Kendra the intended recipient of the doctored drink, or was it really meant for one of the other women?

Then there’s a second assault, this one deadly.  Another woman is taken into the forest, stripped naked, and staked in the snow, and the presumption is that her attacker watched her suffer and die.  In this small community, how could such a person have escaped the vigilance of the committee screening prospective entrants as well as the people living in Haven’s Rock?

An additional complicating factor is Casey’s pregnancy.  She and Eric are delighted about having a child, but at the moment it’s complicating her ability to investigate the crimes.  Much as she doesn’t want to admit it, now that she’s in her eighth month she’s more tired than usual and her mobility is definitely compromised.  Her husband is watchful, perhaps more than she would like, because they are hundreds of miles away from the nearest hospital.  April, Casey’s sister, is Haven’s Rock physician, but April is a neurosurgeon, not an obstetrician.

Cold As Hell is the third volume in the Rockton series.  It continues the stories of multiple characters in the village, but such is Ms. Armstrong’s talent that even those readers who have not read the earlier two novels will have no trouble following the plot.  The characters are realistic, Casey and Eric are a delightful and strong couple, and the plot is scarily believable.

You can read more about the author at this website.