Cold Case Squad [Hardcover]

Edna Buchanan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

"Like all things good and bad in the world, it began with a woman..."

And so begins the first chapter of Edna Buchanan's Cold Case Squad, a new suspense novel that features a special homicide unit that breathes new life into old cases.

A man and a woman are shot dead at a strip club in Miami Beach. A few hours later, an explosion in a garage rocks a child's birthday party and burns a father of three to death. The murders go unsolved and the fire is chalked up to an accident.

But was it an accident? Twelve years later, a blonde walks in to the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad -- which Buchanan fans will remember from The Ice Maiden -- and complains that she's been seeing her husband everywhere she goes. Trouble is, he's been dead for twelve years. In Buchanan's characteristic voice, "Some guys just don't know when to let go."

As the Cold Case Squad unearths the details of the strip club deaths and the dead or missing father -- as well as the unsolved killings of a series of little old ladies -- readers get to know the three cops and their boss: veteran homicide detective Sergeant Craig Burch, whose marriage has turned into a case he can't solve; Detective Sam Stone, for whom the past will always be a mystery; Detective Pete Nazario, airlifted out of Cuba during "Operation Pedro Pan" in the 1960s; and Lieutenant K. C. Riley, for whom one case will never grow cold.

Edna Buchanan has been thrilling readers since her Pulitzer Prize-winning stint as a crime reporter for The Miami Herald. The Chicago Tribune once raved that "few writers can touch Buchanan," to which The Washington Post Book World seemed to respond, "I doubt if anyone else is doing it better." In Cold Case Squad, Edna Buchanan, the woman the Los Angeles Daily News calls "the Queen of crime," delivers unlikely killers, near-perfect murders, and her most suspenseful novel yet.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Usual series heroine Britt Montero (The Ice Maiden; You Only Die Twice) is nowhere to be seen as Buchanan focuses instead on the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad, led by Sgt. Craig Burch: "I breathe new life into old, cold cases and track killers whose trails vanished long ago like footprints on a sea washed beach." Burch is backed by detectives Sam Stone and Pete Nazario and takes orders from Lt. K.C. Riley, who is grieving the death of ex-lover, Kendall McDonald. In fact, all of the squad members have problems both on and off the force, subplots that play out alongside the several murders that command most of the attention. Detective Stone is on the trail of a serial killer who specializes in old ladies, laying the bodies out in meticulously composed death scenes. Stone suspects the killer is an orthodox Jew, clued in by his feisty grandma, who used to work for a Jewish family. The chief case is 12 years old and involves Charles Terrell, who everyone thought was accidentally blown up while working on his car. This cold case heats up quickly when the team chases down Terrell's sexy ex-wife, Natasha, who's dallying with her gardener, Nelson, a naïve Cuban immigrant who provides an amusing Carl Hiassen-like chase scene toward the end. With Buchanan's practiced expertise, all the cases eventually get solved, and the squad's personal problems are either squared away or kept in abeyance for another installment. Buchanan's memorable characters strut their wacky stuff, but, as always, it's the fascinating, hothouse city of Miami that's the real star of the show.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Buchanan launches a new series with this novel, starring Sergeant Craig Burch of the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad. Fans of Buchanan's Britt Montero series may recognize Burch as the cop who helped crime reporter Montero solve a cold case in The Ice Maiden (2002). Although Burch made a superb supporting character, in his first role as the lead, he comes off a bit like a newborn colt on shaky legs. Buchanan has given him the traditional backstory of the homicide cop so haunted by his work that his family life unravels, but he needs considerably more fleshing out if he is going to become a fully formed character. In addition, his first-person narration is wince-producing, a collection of Chandleresque cliches ("Like all things good and bad in the world, it began with a woman") and strained alliterations ("booze, broads, and busted marriages"). Buchanan is on more solid ground with plot and forensic procedure. The ex-wife of a man who was blown to bits while working on his vintage Thunderbird 12 years previously seeks the aid of the Cold Case Squad. The mystery is intensified by the ex-wife's conviction that her deceased husband may still be alive. Despite the missteps, this may yet develop into an intriguing series, and with Buchanan's name on it, it's sure to attract interest. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1ST edition (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743250532
• ISBN-13: 978-0743250535
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,267,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good book., April 9, 2005

By 

L. J. Roberts (Oakland, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cold Case Squad (Hardcover)

With shades of the 87th Precinct, the Cold Case Squad has a wonderful cast of characters with diverse pasts and lives yet working well together as a team. There is excellent dialogue, humor and descriptions of Miami, but balanced with interesting procedure and good suspense. While it helps to have read "The Ice Maiden," it's not completely necessary as this is a wonderful book on it's own and I hope to see a lot more of the Cold Case Squad.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fun and interesting read..., January 5, 2005

By 

Robert Wellen (CHICAGO, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cold Case Squad (Hardcover)

Buchanan's book is a quick read, but not a shallow one. The characters are all interesting and the mysteries (yes, plural) are interesting. There are no absurd scenes where the killer explains it all...just good dectective work. At times she seems a bit like other Miami authors with bizarre car chases or odd family histories, but overall the book works. I have not read the Britt Montero mysteries, but perhaps these are not entirely new characters to those fans. However, as a stand alone, this is a good solid mystery.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Cold Squid, December 21, 2009

By 

Stoney (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Cold Case Squad (Mass Market Paperback)

TEASERS
Teasers are a loathsome device intended to snare bookstore browsers with up front action. The primary effect of most teasers is to confuse and mislead the readers. Buchanan exacerbates this confusion and misdirection with TWO unnecessary teasers. In the first teaser, a nightclub owner is robbed and killed in his office by "Buddy". In the second teaser, a home garage explodes, across the street from a birthday party.

THE SETUP
The story begins 12 years later when April Tyrell reports to the Miami Cold Case Squad that her exhusband Charles (the fellow believed to have died in the garage explosion) is "haunting her dreams" and that she sees him, "everywhere". Policewoman Lt Casey Riley orders the squad to investigate, and they soon concentrate on "Natasha", who was Charles' wife at the time, and who has since gone through a series of husbands.

Numerous sidestories go on simultaneously, many of which may be incomprehensible to new readers who have not read earlier novels in the series. Casey is grieving over detective MacDonald, who was recently killed in an explosion. Sargent Craig Birch is having problems with a crazy vindictive wife. Detective Sam Stone, while worrying about his aged grandmother, is pursuing a serial killer of old women.

CAVEATS
"Cold Case Squad" is a "Britt Montero novel", in which Britt is mentioned only as "the reporter", and no character takes her place as the primary protagonist, or is developed in her absence.

The metaphysical theme of Charles haunting April is unnecessary. I happen to believe in the supernatural, but I do not enjoy the intrusion of the supernatural into rational mystery novels.

No allusion to the first teaser appears until past the half-way point in the novel. And even that is to the effect that a innocent guy was executed for the murders. At about the 4/5 point, the first teaser becomes relevant, but by that time chances are that the reader has forgotten pertinent details.

"Cold Case Squad" contains several dozen named characters, far too many for readers to keep track of. Meaningless factoids, in lieu of any actual character development, are recited for most of the characters, even those who have a single appearance on a single page. One such character's grandfather was a flamenco dance.

Lack of character differentiation (much less character development) is particularly acute for the numerous interchangeable policepersons, in which case irrelevant factoids from earlier novels are recited, such as the fact that one of the detectives was a Pedro Pan kid, and another detective's parents ran a barbeque stand when he was a kid. These facts were relevant in the corresponding earlier novels, but irrelevant in "Cold Case Squad" Of course, most fans of the series will remember the major characters from earlier novels, but that is no excuse for the minimal character development in "Cold Case Squad".

Most of the narration is by the traditional "third person omniscient anonymous narrator". However, very occasionally, and completely unnecessarily, Police Sargent Craig Birch barges in as a first person narrator for a paragraph or two--in first person when referring to himself, although randomly shifting between present and past tense--and in third person when describing others' actions. There is no recognizable transition between Birch's third person narration and when the "anonymous narrator" takes over. Frequently, the reader has no way to know who the narrator is. This is not a trivial matter, it is amateurish writing and abominable editing.

At the end of "Cold Case Squad" Birch reconciles with his his insane vindictive wife. What a freaking doormat! The main character in the similar Buchanan novel "Pulse" does the same thing. I guess Buchanan thinks men should be spineless doormats.

It particularly annoys me that the narrator of the audio-version cannot pronounce many ordinary words correctly. Terrazzo is "ter-raaz-zo" NOT "tear-rat-so. NOAA is "Noah" NOT "No-ha". Charles "Bebe" Rebozo (friend of Richard Nixon) is "Bee-bee", not "bay-bay". The City of Hialeah, is "Hi-a-lee-ah" not Hi-a-lay-ah"

VERDICT
A good read, but not Buchanan's best