Customer Reviews

Cold Case Squad

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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

Edna Buchanan carries the characters from THE ICE MAIDEN forward to COLD CASE SQUAD. Old deaths that push their way into the present.
A woman walks into a Miami police station claiming she has been seeing her husband all over town. The problem is he has been dead for twelve years of has he?
Edan Buchanan has been keeping fans interested in the streets of Miami for a good while. This reader hopes she keeps up the pace.
Nash Black, author whose books are now available on Amazon Kindle.
HaintsWriting as a Small Business

Ms. Buchanan has written a book that clearly makes it out of the infield as a single. Based on the plot, Cold Case Squad could have been a home run. If Ms. Buchanan decides to continue this book as a series, I predict that the next book will be much more successful.

Each of the members of the cold case squad has a secret pain which is well known to the members of the squad . . . but kept from the reader until later in the book. Presumably, the pain must have been revealed in The Ice Maiden. As a result, a lot of the references are mysterious until the pains are disclosed later in the book. If the sources of that pain had been revealed sooner in this book, Cold Case Squad would have worked a lot better. Instead, there's a false feeling about the story telling. Now that I know what the secret pains are, the next book will be easier for me to follow.

As a result, you may want to consider reading The Ice Maiden before this book.

As the story opens, we are given a flash back into an old crime. Three deaths occur in a short period of time, but we don't know if they are all connected or not.

Moving forward to the present, a widow, April Terrell, comes into the cold case squad complaining that she keeps seeing someone who reminds her of her dead husband, who died 12 years earlier in an accident. Lieutenant K.C. Riley impulsively pulls her squad off of their current cases to crash on this one as a suspected homicide. Why? You'll find out before the book ends. But the investigation is an intriguing police procedural.

In the background, the detectives make headway in finding a serial killer who has been following a bizarre ritual. I found this part of the story the most satisfying.

One of the attractive parts of the plot is that it relies on the benefit of fresh perspectives on old problems to solve the cases. I thought that that approach was both realistic and interesting.

The character development of the squad leaves something to be desired, but their ascribed backgrounds are certainly colorful.

Good luck with the next book, Ms. Buchanan!

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.

The title THE CORPSE HAD A FAMILIAR FACE is interchangeable with its author, Edna Buchanan. Buchanan became a household name as a result of that work, and despite subsequently publishing a succession of well-written and imaginative crime novels, CORPSE remains her best-known work. That may change with the publication of COLD CASE SQUAD.

COLD CASE SQUAD begins with two prologues, both of them chronicling apparently unrelated incidents taking place in Miami within 24 hours of each other in June 1992. One is a double murder that takes place in a striptease establishment; the other is an explosion and fire that takes the life of a father of three. One act is deliberate, the other an apparent accident. The murders go unsolved; for the survivors of the explosion, life goes on.

The meat of the book begins with Sergeant Craig Burch of the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad taking a complaint from a woman who believes that she has been seeing her ex-husband in several places. The problem is that her ex-husband died twelve years previously in an explosion. It does not seem like a matter that the Cold Case Squad should be dealing with --- their mission concerns old murder cases that have not been solved --- and, indeed, Burch is about to send the woman on her way when his boss, Lieutenant K.C. Riley, inexplicably orders the squad to investigate the matter. The team slowly but methodically begins to detect a link between the apparently unrelated murders and explosion that took place in June 1992, and the woman's complaint.

Buchanan does a masterful job here, painstakingly establishing the connection point by point while making the reader care about the detectives involved. Burch, in particular, is dealing with his estranged wife, who is harassing him at the station, and elsewhere. Buchanan somehow manages to elicit some sympathy for the wife, even while painting her as a world-class pain. At the same time, Detective Sam Stone of the Squad has discovered an apparent link between a series of murders spanning decades and occurring throughout the country, including Miami, little suspecting that his investigation will put a loved one directly into the target of the killer. Buchanan ratchets up the suspense throughout the story, switching points of view among several individuals and cases, maintaining momentum without confusing the reader, while heading toward a cataclysmic ending.

COLD CASE SQUAD may well be Buchanan's best work to date. This is the first title in a new series. Given that advances in forensic science are enabling police departments to reopen investigations into previously unsolvable murders, there should be interest in this series, as well as renewed, and well-deserved, attention to Buchanan. Highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Cold Case Squad is one of Buchanan's later novels. The "Queen of Crime" writes a suspense novel to feature a special homicide unit that breathes new life into old cases. The prose centers around a man and woman shot dead at a Miami strip club. A few hours later, an explosion in a garage next door to a child's birthday party has left a father of three burned to death. Naturally, at the time, the murder goes unsolved and the fire is chalked up to an accident. Twelve years later, the files are re-activated by detective Sargeant, Craig Burch, who's having marital problems of his own at the time, along with Detective Sam Stone, a guy with a mysterious past, and Detective Pete Nazario, who'd been air-lifted out of Cuba during "Operation Pedro Pan" in the 1960s. And, of course, Lieutenant, K.C. Riley, for whom one case will never grow old. This book is a page-turner that has a great plot with great characters. Don't miss it.

I'm a big Edna Buchanan fan, and have never understood why her Britt Montero books haven't reached the kind of audience that other equally good, but more successful authors have (namely Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich). The woman writes snappy, twisty, evocative crime novels that bring Miami to vibrant life and always keep me guessing. So I was looking forward to "Cold Case Squad," even with Britt Montero nowhere in sight. Unhappily, I have to say that this latest of Buchanan's endeavors is half-baked at best. The cases are certainly interesting enough, and there are some suprises, but halfway through the book, it seems as if Buchanan all but gives up on the narrative. The writing becomes choppy, with some scenes only lasting a small paragraph or two, with the result that the book starts to read like an outline for a screenplay instead of a novel. And stylistically the book is very odd, with half of the scenes involving Detective Burch told in his own voice, and the rest written in the third person. Buchanan may have had a reason for the device, but if so it's not readily apparent. If anything it suggests she didn't have a clear idea of how to tell her story. But, hey, it's always good to have an Edna Buchanan book on the bedside table, even if "Cold Case Squad" left me...well, cold.

Miami is a hotbed of entrepreneurial crime du jour, general mayhem against the residents of a major city bedeviled by crime, corruption and the mentality of a banana republic. At any given time, the perps are assaulting the system with home invasion robberies, petty theft, assault and any number of creative, if illegal, diversions. Yet most of the city funds have been diverted to Homeland Security, leaving police agencies with critical shortages with no end in sight.

Two murder/homicides, an accidental conflagration of a father of three and a series of serial killings targeting elderly women are the cases the Cold Case Squad is currently faced with, all apparently unrelated. As the detectives sort through the disparate clues under the watchful eye of KC Riley, they unravel some interesting coincidences.
Sergeant Craig Burch and Detectives Stone and Nazario are the cops Kathleen Riley depends on, her detectives following through on the crimes that are all but impossible to solve. When two suspicious murders and a man's tragic death twelve years ago come across the squad's radar, the detectives sort through clues and unlikely bits of forensic evidence, discovering more than they bargained for, loose ends that lead to a surprising arrest in what is almost the perfect crime.

Sergeant Burch avoids the marital problems that have followed him on the job, juggling his professional and private lives to pursue a case from Miami to the East Coast. Meanwhile, Detective Stone tackles the murder of an elderly woman, afraid his serial killer will strike again in Miami; Stone tries to balance discretion and the press, alerting the public without tipping his hand to the killer. Behind the scenes, Riley, fights for her squad against threatened budget cuts.

Although this great city has an abundance of crime, it also has a million personal stories, each layer of society alive with criminals and good guys, the habitual raptors preying upon the innocent. And there are some interesting details unveiled during the investigative process, especially the forensic techniques used to identify crime scene victims. The details make a crime novel believable, as well as a realistic portrayal of the detectives, their job talk and personal relationships. Each of the cops holds his own, professional and quick to act in an emergency, a great team. After all, a crime novel is wedded to a formula, but this one is above average, a testimony to Buchanan's talent, well-researched and thoughtfully plotted. Luan Gaines/2005.