Customer Reviews

Cold Heart: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Linda LaPlante had a good thing going and blew it. Lorraine Page was a real and fascinating character, leaving the reader happily, although impatiently, waiting for the next book. In Cold Heart, the third in the Page series, as soon as Lorraine meets Jake Burton you know things are moving too fast and the plot begins to really ring false. Linda LaPlante clearly wanted to move the story along as quickly as possible and bring the series to an end. And what an end! Trite, awkwardly written, almost painfully unbelievable and a slap in the face to her dedicated fans.

If you care about Lorraine Page, DO NOT READ Cold Heart...she deserves a better ending. A thoroughly disappointing book.

The first book in the Lorraine series, Cold Shoulder, was darn good. Great characterizations, good plot. The second, 'Cold Blood', was not as good, but still very readable. 'Cold Heart' went straight downhill. The plot was haphazard, the characterizations were mediocre. Lorraine lost a bit of her sparkle and if I hadn't read the first two books earlier, I would have found her fairly uninteresting. However, it was the ending that made this book horrible. You do NOT kill off your heroine. Sure, it can happen in real life, but this isn't real life. We read books and go to movies to see what life could and should be - and killing off someone like Lorraine, who has finally succeeded in her struggle to pull her life together, sends a message that life is hopeless. There was not even an attempt at a noble purpose in her death.

I've never given away an ending of a book before, but this one deserves to be exposed. Shame on Ms LaPlante. My advice - don't bother reading this book and allow a successful Lorraine to live on in your mind, as someone to respect and admire.

I've so enjoyed the first two books in this series, Cold Shoulder and Cold Blood, that it was actually exciting for me to begin this one in the hopes that Lorraine Page is still on the right track towards putting her life back together. When Cold Blood ended, Lorraine and her partners had just received a million dollar bonus for solving their last case. This installment begins with Lorraine spending some of that money getting new office digs, a new car, some new clothes and waiting for the phone to ring in her private investigation agency. Her assistant Rosie has been replaced by Decker since Rosie and Rooney are still honeymooning in Europe. Fans of this series were delighted when Rosie found love in Cold Blood - how ironic.

The phone finally rings at Page Investigations beginning this new adventure into the world of movie producing, pornography, art theft and a possible love interest for Lorraine. The appearance of Jake Burton, as the new chief of detectives, will add some spice to the series not only in the police department but in Lorraine's apartment as well. As she tries to find out who really killed Harry Nathan, all the supporting characters in Harry's world begin to die as well. As his estate travels from one ex-wife to the other, Lorraine will also travel to the Hamptons and New Mexico in an effort to tie all the loose ends together.

While Lorraine is out of town, many things will be going on behind the scenes back home in LA. Rooney and Rosie have returned from their honeymoon and come up with some startling evidence that might bring Lorraine's past demons back to the forefront endangering her life.

Cold Heart is definitely a perfect title for this book as my heart was cold as I read and cried through the last few pages. I have only one thing to say to the author - How Could You?

Wow- after reading some of the other reviews I am shocked. I loved this book. I was sad and shocked by the ending, but it didn't nullify every thing else good in the story. I am saddened that we won't have any future Lorraine books, but I am sure that Ms. LaPlante will write something equally entertaining.

This book is the weakest of the three. Characters are not well fleshed out, this book just wraps up loose ends so that the author can justify the ending. A word to the wise is be happy with COLD BLOOD and COLD SHOULDER. COLD HEART reads like a plot to a tv movie of the week ... one that I would not watch!

I basically agree with Terry Mathews and "rationalcoach". I couldn't believe LaPlante killed off Decker, one of the only decent people in the book, so about two-thirds of the way through with the totally unrealistic second date proposal from Jake and extreme happiness on Lorraine's part, I started to get suspicious and went to the back of the book assuming she was going to kill off Jake. That would have been bad enough. But to kill off Lorraine, unreal! I will never read another LaPlante book and I will make a point of reading available reviews before I buy in the future. I thought Cold Shoulder was great, wasn't crazy about the second one, but to say I was disappointed in Cold Heart is a major understatement.

Cold Heart by Lynda La Plante Random House 1998

Lorraine Page, recovering alcoholic, divorced mother of two teenage girls and beautiful has just received a million dollars bonus from her last case. Rosie and Rooney, her two best friends, are on their honeymoon in Europe and Lorraine is busy setting up her new apartment and office called "Page Investigations". A telephone call, ostensibly from Cindy Nathan, takes her to the house of Harry Nathan, a very wealthy film producer and owner of Maximedia, who has just been murdered. Cindy, Harry's wife, is a suspect and Page Investigations is hired by Cindy to find the murderer of Harry.

Harry's two former wives (Kendall and Sonja) and a long time friend, Raymond Vallance are also part of the coterie that are suspected of Harry's murder. As Lorraine digs into Harry's past she uncovers an art fraud scheme that has netted about 20 million dollars but no one seems to know when the money or paintings are. When Cindy is found dead, an apparent suicide, Lorraine suspects Kendall but Raymond Vallance also comes under scrutiny. Harry's penchant for videotaping his sex games with wives and friends could also be a motive for murder and the case becomes even more complicated when the brother of the boy Lorraine shot while she was with the police, enters and arranges a fatal accident for Lorraine's new secretary. Also on the scene is a new chief of detectives, Jake Burton,. who Lorraine falls for like a ton of bricks and severely complicates her life.

Lorraine wades through the clues and finally solves the puzzle. but before she can do anything about it she is severely beaten by the brother of her shooting victim.

Lynda La Plante as always tells a good story, full of excitement. Lorraine Page has been the protagonist in other La Plant mysteries and is a very sympathetic character. In the others she struggles with her alcoholism; in this one she is finally getting it together. The story tends to drag a little and is not quite up to the level her other books. Never-the-less a good read.

I read the first two books in the series and throughly enjoyed them. Naturally I was looking forward to the third, but was very disappointed in the story (which was boring) and the way the novel ended. Why the author apparently hated this character so much that she had to devise this ending for her is unknown, but it was a real downer. She should have stopped with the second novel.

This book was a real disappointment because all the real story-telling and scene-building was overtaken by melodramatic descriptions of unbelievable and unappealling characters. I found myself turning page after page, waiting for a real plot to emerge. Some of the most critical sub-plots of the story received almost no attention. In the end, the identity of the villian was of no surprise to anyone who had read the last 100 or 200 pages of the book. What happened to the suspenseful climax? What happened to the twists? What happened to the heated confrontation with the exposed killer?

What a disappointment! Cold Blood and Cold Shoulder were such good reads. Then Cold Heart left me cold. What a stinker. The plot points rely on unbelievable coincidence that only amateur writers use. Not up to the typically high storytelling excellence of other LaPlante novels. It is so different in quality that I wouldn't be surprised to learn some day that LaPlante really didn't write this one.