Cold Case Squad [Paperback]

Edna Buchanan (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: POCKET BOOKS @ (1995)
• ASIN: B000SF0A98
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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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
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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
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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