Cold Blood (Paris Murphy Mysteries) [Paperback]

Theresa Monsour (Author)

Book Description

Series: Paris Murphy Mysteries | Publication Date: February 22, 2005

After finding the finger of a missing bridesmaid, Justice Trip is enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame.

Homicide detective Paris Murphy is finding Trip's heroics a little hard to take. And when she realizes that she knew Trip in high school, the danger becomes all too clear.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Efficient plotting and crisp dialogue mark Monsour's second Paris Murphy thriller, in which what goes around comes around in more ways than one. Set in the Twin Cities of Minnesota and revisiting likable characters introduced in Clean Cut (2003), this disturbing novel focuses on the attractive homicide detective's pursuit of the creepy, drug-addicted Sweet Justice Trip, a serial hit-and-run killer Murphy once knew in high school. Trip was assaulted by Murphy's pals after he asked her to Homecoming, and he blamed her for the attack, later running his tormentors off the road into a lake in his first deadly "accident." Eighteen years later it's time for a reunion, and Trip's still having accidents. Playing the hero, he pretends to help search for Bunny Pederson, a drunk bridesmaid he plowed down and buried in a shallow grave. Murphy recognizes Trip on a newscast and begins to suspect her ex-classmate might be connected to that crime and possibly others. Murphy's working relationship with boss Axel Duncan (think Redford with muscles) heats up, suggesting further developments in the next installment. Monsour's depiction of the harrowing relationship Trip has with his father contrasts neatly with Murphy's organized work and more normal personal life, despite its romantic confusions, making this a satisfying, if not surprising, suspense read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Forget Florida. Lose L.A. It's Minnesota that's heating up contemporary mysteries. Think William Kent Krueger and John Sandford, both of whom move their novels easily between the Twin Cities and the wild country to the north. Monsour's Cold Blood is almost excessively creepy crawly. In the second outing for St. Paul homicide detective Paris Murphy, the action shuttles between a celebrity-craving killer and Murphy's suspicions that the geek who asked her to a dance in high school could be the killer. This mystery is not long on detective work since the reader follows the itinerant salesman as he commits vehicular homicide on a woman, then joins in the search party for her, dropping one of her severed fingers so he can "find" it and become the center of attention. The reader also follows Detective Murphy's too-pat realization that the guy hanging out at this scene and the next murder scene could be the guy she turned down long ago. This novel's strength is suspense--the "Oh God, no!" kind--as Paris both realizes the guy is a killer and underestimates his willingness to kill her. Cuticle-destroying. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Jove (February 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0515138630
• ISBN-13: 978-0515138634
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,081,765 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, Creepy Crime Thriller, June 14, 2004

By 

Craig Larson (Maple Grove, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cold Blood (Hardcover)

I read a bunch of books over Memorial Day weekend,
including Monsour's second Paris Murphy novel. I'm
not sure why I never read the first, but I will have
to go back and correct that mistake. Wow! _Cold Blood_
was a great book.

A bridesmaid has disappeared while walking home from the
reception in Moose Lake, Minnesota. A few days later,
during a search of the area, Justice Trip, a traveling
salesman who has volunteered to help, stumbles across
a finger, which proves to be that of the missing woman.
He briefly becomes a minor celebrity when it is discovered
he's had similar luck before, finding the necklace of a
missing girl in a rural area of Wisconsin, just before the
girl herself was discovered, alive and well. This time,
things don't look as hopeful for the missing woman.

Paris Murphy, a homicide detective in St. Paul, sees the
news coverage and recognizes Trip as a high school classmate,
one who'd been picked on and mistreated in high school and
someone who'd once asked her to a homecoming dance. She still
feels bad that her old boyfriend and some of his friends had
beaten Trip up as a result. Since there's a St. Paul link to
the disappearance--the woman's estranged husband lives nearby--
Murphy becomes involved in the case and can't shake her suspicion
that Trip might know more about what happened than he's letting
on.

Monsour does a great job of capturing the Minnesota locations
and just a general feel for the people and the atmosphere of both
small town and big city Minnesota. Murphy is a great character,
the daughter of a Lebanese mother and an Irish father, and one of
a large group of children. She has her own personal problems--her
relationship with her separated husband doesn't seem to be improving,
no matter what she tries, and the man she's had an affair with recently
is pushing her too hard to make their relationship something more.
And she can't help but feel some sort of attraction to her boss in
homicide, a former undercover cop who is something of a legend in the
department.

Monsour also does a nice job with the villain in the book. We almost,
not quite, but almost, feel sorry for him. He's someone we can sympathize
with, though the reasons for his actions escape explanation, even at the
end. There are some gruesome passages in the book, so if you aren't up
to some blood and gore in your mysteries, you might want to skip this
one, but all in all, I was very pleasantly surprised. I'm going to check
out _Clean Cut_, the first novel in this series, right away.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gritty, fast-paced plot and a dynamite, take-charge detective make for an entertaining read!, August 26, 2006

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cold Blood (Paris Murphy Mysteries) (Paperback)

When bridesmaid Bunny Pederson vanishes after a friend's wedding, a search is mounted in the community of Moose Lake, Minnesota. Justice Trip, a traveling salesman & "concerned citizen," volunteers to be a member of the search party and finds the woman's finger...just the severed finger not the entire body. Yuck! He is rewarded for his efforts by mega-publicity and lauded as the community hero. Don't ask me why...he only found a finger.

Paris Murphy, a Twin Cities Police Department detective, sees news coverage of the event on TV and remembers Trip from high school. Back then he was a social misfit who had a crush on her. Paris' jock boyfriend & three of his buddies gave the loner, nicknamed "Sweet Justice," a bad beating for his misplaced affections. Ominously, the victim's motto was and is, "What goes around comes around!" All four boys died in a terrible car crash before graduation.

Paris gets the creeps after watching "Sweet" on the small screen and reminisces about her strange former classmate. He still looks weird to her after all these years so she goes out to Moose Lake to investigate. And man (!!) does she find trouble!

This is Detective Murphy's second appearance in a Theresa Monsour police procedural. My introduction to this intelligent, feisty, part Irish, part Lebanese law officer was in "Dark House," the third book in the series. Paris is a more complex character than most female protagonists in this genre. There is more to her than the same old "tough but vulnerable" facade.

Not only am I taken with this three-dimensional take charge lady, I also like her husband, (although the marriage is floundering), her family, colleagues, boss and problematic love life. The dialogue is realistic, the plot is gritty, fast paced, dark and very creepy. Ms. Monsour, an award-winning journalist for a St. Paul newspaper, gives us a vivid look inside the head of a totally wacko individual, a serial killer - and the view is chilling. The writing is quite good! What's not to like??
JANA

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars powerful police procedural, May 8, 2004

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cold Blood (Hardcover)

He was the one everyone picked on in school. He had no friends everyone in school picked on him. He had the nerve to ask one of the popular girls to a school dance. Her boyfriend and three of his jock pals beat him to a bloody pulp. He swore he would get even one day.

Paris Murphy, the girl he asked out, is now a St. Paul Homicide detective. She sees Justice Trip on television searching for a woman who has gone missing after walking out of a wedding reception. Justice is the one who found the missing woman?s pinkie as he joins in the search party but something about his demeanor doesn?t set right with Paris. He plays the hero giving out false information to a reporter making her wonder if he had anything to do with the killing. When the body is found in a park, Justice is also there. As Paris researches the crime, she comes upon some interesting facts that make her think that Justice is a serial killer. Now all she has to do is find some evidence to back up her supposition.

Told from the point of view of the heroine and the antagonist reader knows at all times what is going on in their heads and can predict what their next move will be. This is only Theresa Monsour?s second book but with her complex characterizations and tight and complex storylines, it is easy to see that she is going to be one of the new stars in the crime thriller galaxy. COLD BLOOD is a powerful tour-de force, a police procedural that takes the reader into the investigation from start to finish.

Harriet Klausner