Customer Reviews

Chillwater Cove

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I do not ordinarily read crime novels, but was drawn to CHILLWATER COVE because I grew up in Tennessee and graduated from a university eerily similar to the fictional Avalon College. This book grabbed me from the start, and I ended up reading it until the wee hours of the morning. It has great pacing, heart-pounding suspense, and characters who are so well-fleshed out you can almost reach out and touch them. The novel puts the reader through the emotional wringer because you come to care about these people. Although the novel is frightening and sometimes violent, the ending is quite gratifying.

Lakeman has chosen to approach the American South and the Tennessee mountain communities in a measured and nuanced way - leaving in all the gray areas most choose to ignore. Lakeman does indeed have the pacing of Dan Brown, but with literary chops as well! I believe I have stumbled upon the next James Lee Burke. I look forward to reading Lakeman's next novel in this series, BROKEN WING.

Lakeman's newest thriller focuses on Peggy Weaver, an FBI Special Agent who has recently begun working the Crimes against Children Unit in Pennsylvania. After the violent takedown of a horrible husband/wife team who were trafficking children, Peggy and her team find pictures of child pornography on the computers in the crime scene. Horrified, Peggy's partner Mike (protagonist in Lakeman's first book) immediately wants to follow the lead - but Peggy locks down the photos and everything in the file - under her personal password - until further notice. Mystified, Mike follows orders but not without wondering what it was in Peggy's private life that would cause her to disobey FBI policies so blatantly?

When Peggy sees the 25 year old photos on the current crime scene, she knows that her life has been turned upside down. Trying to salvage the privacy of her best friend before the pictures are processed, she heads to her childhood home in rural Tennessee, but not before Sammie, the girl in the pictures, lets her know that she has gotten the pictures via email, as well. As children, Sammie and Peggy suffered a tragic event together - Samantha's kidnapping. While Sammie was recovered - barely alive and left for dead - Peggy's memories of the time have never entirely returned. This heartbreaking event managed to bring the girls closer together, but they never spoke of what happened. Now the two women - Peggy an FBI agent and Sammie a respected professor at the local university - must face their fears and memories to find out who was behind the cause of their terror.

When Sammie once again goes missing, Peggy is determined to find her at all costs - even if it means her relationship with her father - the local sheriff. Never ideal, Peggy and her father's rapport was rocky at the best of times, but now this stressful event seems to bring it to it's head, and Peggy's not dodging his verbal hits just to keep the peace anymore.

I was looking forward to this unusual thriller even though I hadn't read The Shadow Catchers, mostly because of the idea of the Melungeon community that is presented as part of the background. There are a lot of sub-plots to the main storyline and they are a part of most all of them, but they rarely take the spotlight. The history and prejudices of the area are almost overwhelming, and are frequently confusing. I still enjoyed the read, but after finishing the novel I still didn't quite understand everything that went on and felt like many of the questions had never been answered. While this may be something that I simply didn't compute, it made enjoying it more difficult. I would recommend this to mystery fans, with the hope that maybe someone could help end my confusion.

FBI Special Agent Peggy Weaver works in the Crimes Against Children Unit of the Philadelphia office. However, she received a bitter reminder of why she became a specialized agent when she receives an email containing porn photos. Over two decades ago when she was ten years old, Peggy and her best friend Samantha Stallworth were abducted. Peggy escaped, but Samantha was sexually molested and further abused by her kidnapper.

Now a college professor Samantha calls Peggy informing her she received the same email. Stunned Peggy goes to her college hometown Avalon, Tennessee where her father is police chief and racial strife is boiling over. When Samantha vanishes, Peggy vows to save her friend and catch the culprit who is toying with her.

The key to this interesting regional police procedural is how many people including her father and his department and Samantha's relatives hinder Peggy on her desperate search to save her friend's life. Readers will feel the pain and guilt that Peggy feels as she not only needs to save her friend's life, but sees it as redemption for her failure to be able to provide her father with expert witnessing when Samantha was snatched as a child. Readers will appreciate this character driven investigative tale and seek out Thomas Lakeman's previous gripping FBI thriller (see THE SHADOW CATCHERS).

Harriet Klausner

The Florida-Sun Sentinel described Thomas Lakeman's debut thriller "The Shadow Catchers" as "one of the best debuts of 2006". With "Chillwater Cove", Lakeman proves that he is not a one-book wonder, but rather a skillful teller of dark tales, with an uncanny awareness of the truly dark side of humanity.
The protagonist here is Peggy Weaver, a particularly adept & no-nonsense FBI agent, who returns to her home town in Tennessee at the behest of an old friend, Samantha, who as a child, was abducted, tortured & molested, before being set free. The case was never solved. Then Samantha is abducted again, and Weaver sets out to find her, determined to reveal the truth behind the decades old crime. However, there are those in the small community equally determined to keep the truth hidden, as Weaver quickly discovers, when even the role of her father, the local sheriff, is called into doubt. At the heart of it all lies the unknown abductor, who once offered to exchange Samantha for Weaver. A true psychopath, he is symptomatic of the evil that lurks under the surface of this rural community. This is riveting reading, although be warned, there are times when the the narrative seems to be taking one step forward & two back, & to some readers, this can be frustrating. But I urge all readers to go the distance. Ultimately, you know that Weaver will triumph, but it the journey to the final outcome is so riveting, as she weaves her way through the myriad layers of deceit and treachery that Lakeman has created. He is one of that elite group of gifted authors, able to compel the reader onwards, no matter how nightmarish that journey might be. This is a genuine five-star read, almost impossible to put down.
Having said all that, "Chillwater Cove" has one major flaw. The final twist in the tail, is, in my opinion, unecessary. It tends to detract from the story because of its unlikeliness; it seems just too convenient and trite. But I agree with fellow reviewer Catherine Richardson, who suggests that Lakemen may just "be the next James Lee Burke".

After awhile I stopped reading this book. I didn't like it. I wasn't really sure why the author led me from one place to another. Some of the characters were not believable. I usually finish a book even if I don't like it. I started to look for excuses to stop reading this book and found them.

or maybe the past two or three years. This is a first-class mystery, well-researched historically and with enough twists and turns to make you dizzy with literary delight! The only reason I gave it five stars is because six are not available.
Written in a style guaranteed to keep you turning the pages, this thriller delivers the goods. The action is exciting, and complements, rather than overwhelms, the story. Every character is not only believable, but three-dimensional rather than "flat" and faceless. "Great" does not begin to do this book justice. Read it at your earliest opportunity, or sooner if possible. It's that good!

The love of plot possibilities rules Chillwater Cove. The story of Agent Weaver's childhood brush with abduction is passed between characters like a basketball in the hot hands of superlative players. Every character contributes so much point of view, that unpacking it would necessitate another novel.
You have your creepy child pornography ring, your FBI protocols & Maxwell Smart technology, your Rednecks, your Covites, your politicians, your obno University students, your tweedy professors, your forest primeval, your Tennessee Walking Horse business, your Juvi graduates, your Viet Nam veterans. There is even a Pacific Rim sex doll with real hair! Halts, fakes, and re-directions between these subjects toss the reader's attention like cannonball passes in a fast break.

Focus hurls from character to character, scene to scene, from the present into the past and back to now. Thrilling! Confusing! Who to believe? Chief Weaver, FBI Agent Peggy Weaver's father, is a tight-lipped enigma. When do we know enough truth to judge him?

When Chillwater Cove screeched to a halt, I rushed the book to my brother to read for his assistance in picking over the cool details I had sprinted through. Fans will require a series of books to flesh out Lakeman's abundance of topics touched with an exuberant, cavalier pen.

See story lines above. I found Lakeman's second novel moved at a steady pace and provided depth to the characters. I was not at all enthralled by this one and would rate it only as average. I say this because as I was reading this one, I found myself looking forward to my next book, and wasn't pulled in like I normally am.

I read Lakeman's first novel so I decided to give the second one a read. Yet another story about terrible things happening to young children. This doesn't offend me so much as it bores me. Six chapters in put the book down and decided to go find something more interesting.

Sorry, but the plot made little sense in the end. It reminded me of Batman the television series for it's camp and hair raising escapes.
this FBI agent found herself in one life threatening predicament after the other. More narrow escapes, rescues in the nick of time and death defying
antics than you can imagine in one book about a female FBI agent. I'm still not sure why characters did what they did but boy the ride was
hilarious. Though I don't think that was the intent. I admit to reading the whole thing in earnest curiosity. Where in the world is this thing going?
It can't be as stupid as it seems? A sort of "Kidnapping On The Orient Express" down south.