Customer Reviews

Cold Comfort

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

 

 

Hector Bellevance, a former Boston cop, burnt-out, his marriage destroyed, moves back to his small, picturesque but stagnating Vermont hometown to take up truck farming and a quiet life. Except for the mistake of agreeing to be constable, a job more properly described as dog officer, he's doing fine. Until his neighbors, an affluent summer couple, get themselves murdered.

Bredes' third novel gets off to a quick start and accelerates through events that threaten to destroy more than Bellevance's peace. Bluff and guarded but impulsive, Bellevance gets involved when the staties look likely to railroad his younger brother, who discovered the bodies - a day or two before he reported them.

As he bulls and finesses his way into the investigation, Bellevance takes up with a pretty young reporter and together they begin uncovering a secret network of greed and drugs under the town's placid exterior.

Breedes fleshes out his characters with hidden depths and unreliable surfaces. The normal pantheon of hardscrabble farmers and country people is augmented by the sorts that come to the country for its privacy, like survivalists and porn entrepreneurs. The plot is tight, the setting vivid and the hero is smarter than he is lucky.

...from [...]:

Don Bredes is not exactly a household name right now, a situation that is somewhat puzzling to me, and one that I would hope to be temporary. COLD COMFORT is his third novel, so he's not exactly flooding the market with quantity, choosing instead to raise the tide with quality. And COLD COMFORT does just that.

COLD COMFORT, from its opening paragraph to its last pages, reminds me of THE LAST GOOD KISS by James Crumley. That is not to say that COLD COMFORT is a slavish imitation, or tribute, or pastiche, or whatever, of Crumley's masterpiece. No, it is none of those. It is similar in the sense that it places Hector Bellevance, its troubled protagonist, in a seldom visited setting --- northern Vermont, in this case --- to tread quietly but patiently through a forest full of lies to an uneasy conclusion, all the while keeping the reader fascinated.

Bellevance is an ex-cop and ex-husband who moves his shattered life from Boston to Tipton, his northern Vermont hometown, where he ekes out a quiet, small town existence raising vegetables on property he inherited from his mother. He is offered the vacant position of town constable, which he accepts with considerable reluctance, though the title is little more than ceremonial and involves haphazard enforcement of local nuisance laws. All of that changes dramatically when a transplanted Canadian couple living just down the street from him are brutally murdered. Spud, a somewhat simple but personally complicated potato farmer and Bellevance's half-brother, discovers the bodies under somewhat suspicious circumstances and becomes the primary suspect when it is discovered that he has lied about these circumstances and his involvement with one of the victims.

Bellevance, motivated as much by his sense of duty to his brother as to his gut feeling that Spud, in Bellevance's words, "just doesn't have it in him," begins his own investigation. Bellevance soon finds that he has few friends when he begins exposing the dark side of his small town to sunlight. Everyone, it seems, has secrets, and everyone --- from Spud to members of the state police --- is lying. Bellevance's most difficult problem, besides ascertaining who killed the victims, is why.

Bredes hopefully has many more books left to write. This reader, for one, wouldn't mind at all if he took us back to Tipton for another visit with Hector Bellevance.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub


(c) Copyright 2001, [...]. All rights reserved.

Don Bredes has now written three novels around the character of Hector Bellevance set in the acutely observed environment of northern Vermont -- this one, "The Fifth Season," and "The Errand Boy." All are excellent, and I recommend them highly. Characters are well defined and interesting, the Vermont environment is fully integrated into the story, the process of observation, deduction and revelation should satisfy the most demanding reader of police procedurals. It is not necessary to read the books in order, but if you do you will see the Bellevance character develop subtleties of character that increase his appeal as a series lead. If you want to sample the author, start with "The Errand Boy," the most recent and in some ways the best of the series. You will almost certainly want to pick up the other two after you finish it.

"Cold Comfort" is a sometimes grim and wintry reading experience. I am sorry the one-star reviewer was so put off by the book, but I think the majority opinion on this novel and the author's other Bellevance books are a more reliable indicator of what most readers will find.

i loved it thought it was great everyone should read it

I had high hopes after the first few chapters that this was going to be an entertaining suspense/myestery. Sympathetic protagonist, bucolic setting, compelling drama. Sadly, my expectations were crushed as the story descended into a welter of cliches normally associated with made-for-tv movies. The story promises to be a kind of small town mystery with unique characters and memorable insights. The author regretably felt compelled to throw in an international crime syndicate, incrediable series of twists and complications that prompted more questions than answers and fnally an action climax that produced more groans than suspense. I was left with one outstanding question - who killed the editor?

This is one of the distasteful books I have ever read. If I were not determined to finish each book I start, I would never have made it to the bitter end. The characters are one-dimensional with no redeeming qualities. I would not recommend this book to anyone.