Customer Reviews

Cold Blood

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

 

 

With Cold Blood, Lynda LaPlante continues her story of ex-cop Lorraine Page which she began in Cold Shoulder. Lorraine Page continues her journey back to the top in Cold Blood after hitting rock bottom, and turning tricks for survival in Cold Shoulder. While this book does not contain the angst of the previous, it is a good, readable detective story.

With an offer of one million dollars on the table, Lorraine joins the hunt for lost heiress Anna Louise Caley. Lorraine uses her street savvy and cop instinct to help her find the clues to the mystery. She interviews, intimidates and uses sex to find the clues to Anna Louise's whereabouts.

Lorraine continues to be one of the more interesting female detectives. She is a person of dubious morals, who has left much of value behind her. She substitutes sex for love and fights alcoholism with varying success. Lorraine is perhaps the toughest female in the genre, not always likable, but always interesting.

If you like hard-boiled mysteries, this is an excellent book. Please read Cold Shoulder first.

When I read Cold Shoulder, the first book in this series, I immediately felt a connection to the main character, Lorraine Page. She's nothing like I am - as a matter of fact, she's quite different but she seems like someone I would like. As she struggles through her daily routine, trying to put her life back in order, she manages to capture the reader's heart in such a way that we will defend her to her dying day. In Cold Shoulder, she was actually given the "cold shoulder" by all those who knew and loved her. When her partner is killed on duty, she begins a downward spiral causing her to lose her job as a policewoman, lose her husband, lose her kids, resort to drugs and alcohol for some relief from her nightmares and basically give up living. It's not until she meets "Rosie", an AA member, that her life will finally get the help it needs to go on.

Cold Blood now finds Lorraine starting her own private investigation agency with Rosie as her partner. Their coupling is so very needed by both of them. Rosie will keep Lorraine on track and Lorraine will provide a much needed source for Rosie to mother. In this episode, Lorraine will travel from LA to New Orleans as she tries to find the missing teenage daughter of a wealthy California couple. She will be joined by Rosie, as well as Bill Rooney, a retired police captain, and Nick Bartello, another old friend of Bill's from the police department. The foursome has a great incentive...a million-dollar bonus if they can find 18-year-old Anna Louise Caley dead or alive.

This book is a fun romp through New Orleans in the midst of Mardi Gras. As usual, Lorraine is overbearingly persistent in tracking down all the clues that will hopefully lead to some closure for the girl's parents. Although the reader hopes and prays that the girl will be found alive, her blood just might be "cold" by the time they find her.

I'm just about ready to pick up the next book in the series - Cold Heart - and am looking forward to following Lorraine around again and making sure she stays away from the bottle.

An awesome twist of detail, accompanied by shocking findings by Lorraine Page, a private investigator who surpasses all the other private investigators who have been hired by the ultra-rich parents of a missing 16-teen-year-old girl. In a last-ditch effort, Page is hired by the mother of the girl. Page has her own black past and desperately needs to find the girl to save her falling-apart private investigation business. That, she does, and with a vengeance. The book is confusing at times, and the amount of characters made me almost put it down several times because I had to keep turning back pages to remember who everybody was -- that's something you're not supposed to have to do in a good book. I'm glad I didn't stop reading, because I discovered Ms. La Plante to be one of the top mystery writers I've seen after finishing this book. A prime mix of sex, blood and glamour.

"Cold Shoulder", the first novel in this series, was successful largely because of its rich characterizations. In this sequel, the characters have already been developed and not much happens to them, outside the relatively pedestrian mystery plot. Lorraine Page has another brush with the bottle, but this turns out to be nothing more than a red herring designed to artifically add to the suspense. The book also suffers from a weak false ending. Readable and generally enjoyable, but hardly up to the standard of the original.

Lynda La Plante gave us Lorraine Page, a strong, talented detective, who exuded hope as she picked herself up from skid road in "Cold Shoulder." A fast-paced writer, La Plante's strength is in creating and describing such characters through action.

"Cold Blood," illustrates that sharp edge on which Lorraine walks. She is drinking again, creating a "denial" that she could control alcohol. Lorraine alienates Rosie and Rooney, associates and helpmates. She lets the "pot at the end of the rainbow" blind her. Her actions seemed to be out of a "blind love" or a "blind rage" or a "blind fear." Although the readers get to the bottom of the mystery, Lorraine doesn't. She lands on feet, but there is little if any personal redemption.

This is exactly what I admire about this series. La Plante isn't afraid to give us a tough heroine that we can dislike and distrust yet admire as she struggles for professional success against many major personal weaknesses. In "Cold Shoulder," we were exposed to a full development of Lorraine's past. I hope "Cold Blood" indicates that La Plante will take us slowly through Lorraine's future, one that is jostled, impassioned and spontaneous.

I could hardly wait to dive into La Plante's latest Lorraine Page saga. I adored her first story, "Cold Shoulder," and wrote a glowing review for our newspaper. I don't remember questioning the editing once during "Shoulder."

However, in "Blood," I had questions staring with page 46 when the butler brought glasses of water, "fizzy and still," for refreshments. "Fizzy and still" water????? The only explanation I can figure is that since La Plante's from England, they must have those types of water there.

Then, just a few pages later, Lorraine Page is asking questions about the girl she's been hired to find. She's talking to one of the girl's friends and tennis parnters. She asks the girl if she and the missing girl "got on." Pluuueeeezzz! No Private Eye from LA would ever deliver a question in so formal a manner. Again, La Plante's editor dropped the ball.

However, the most glaring error of La Plante and her editor is calling Mardi Gras CARNIVAL. What a joke! I'm from the south and have been to Mardi Gras more times that I care to admit and have never ONCE heard it called Carnival. Rio de Janiero has Carnival...New Orleans has Mardi Gras.

It makes you wonder if La Plante even bothered to visit New Orleans while writing the book. She mentions several places I know, but she also makes up a lot of locales. It also seemed to me that La Plante never really got the feel for New Orleans' darker side. Yes, voodoo and mojo exist there among the moonlight and magnolias. However, La Plante never really soils her pretty hands digging into this darkness like, say, Zora Neale Hurston did.

My advice is to avoid this book if you're even vaguely familiar with LA cop-turned-detective language or with New Orelans and the mojo side of her personality. La Plante and her publisher completely missed to boat on this one. Greed and the rush to get another book out have ruined yeat another fine author.

What a shame!

While I am a HUGE fan of Prime Suspect, I was not a fan of the Lorraine Page saga, especially after I had to put Cold Shoulder down 3/4 of the way through because I simply did not care what happened to Lorraine, so fed up was I with her battle with the bottle (good thing she's not real or I'd be terribly heartless). This book does not fcous nearly as much on Lorraine's drinking problem as the first one (thank God). This was a real down and dirty mystery that I enjoyed but I found Ms. LaPlante's attempts to sound "American" and to have Lorraine, Bill and Rosie sound like tough Los Angelenos irritating. I also found the emotions overwrought, especially between Lorraine and a main suspect. She's in love with him after 3 days? Give me a break! Another former cop brought into the case by Rooney decides Lorraine is the love of his life and tells her so after 2 days? Get real! The plot itself, involving Hollywood brats and the dark side of New Orleans was very good, although I agree with the above reviewer who thought the descriptions of New Orleans were hugely lacking. All in all...the SUBSTANCE of the book was good but the characters and their settings were a little unrealistic. And one character in particular...the famous movie star Elizabeth Seal...the explanation at the end (FINALLY) of why she is the way she is made me laugh out loud...I'm sorry but it was ludicrous (some nonsense about a movie set and a curse and snakes). Anyway, read it if you must but be warned.

I couldn't help but love this book. Not only is it a great page-turner, but the private eye is a woman who is very emotionally damaged after accidentally shooting a child . She is a very interesting and complex character. Once a police officer, she has a history of in-the-gutter alcoholism and drug addiction, along with prostitution. As the book opens she has been in and out of recovery.

The plot centers on a missing teenager, a lot of voodoo, and the important emotional connections between people.

Highly recommended.

Lorraine Page is back, this time with a her own private detective agency. But sadly buisness has been going stale, in fact Lorraine is contemplating shutting the place down till she fortuantly nets a high profile case. Anna Louise Calley, an 18 year old beauty and daughter of former film star Elizabeth Calley has gone missing for eleven months! And it's Lorraine's job, aided by her two assistants, the ever optimistic Rosie, and grumbling Bill Rooney to find the missing girl dead or alive in a space of two weeks! If not their contracts are terminated and they wouldn't recieve their one million dollar bonus. This is Lorraine first big case, and she is fiercly determined to solve it for her own piece of mind and to get herself some professional respect. From the high class of LA's richest and finest to the dark, murky alleys of New Orlean's notorious French Quarter, LaPlante fashion's a gripping story which consists of hauntingly brilliant and realistic characters and a macabre plot filled with violence,voodo,and self redemption . With Lorraine Page, LaPlante has created one of the grittiest, strongest and realistic characters ever put on the crime novel. Divorced, with out custody of any of her three kids, former chronic alcoholic and hooker Lorraine Page isn't no angel. But we feel her pain,tears, and joy as she tries to find her place in the world. And it is maybe in this sense that this book and probably this series may slightly falter, for it maybe a little bit to melodramatic for some readers. But if you are looking for a gritty crime novel with strong vibrant characters and powerful plots go no further than Linda LaPlante COLD SERIES. Written by one of the most prolific and successful in the buisness.

This is an excellent book for mystery buffs. I was so involved with the story, I didn't want it to end. It is believable and well written. I would put it at a similar level as PD James' novels, but faster moving.