Customer Reviews

Cold Pursuit

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

REVIEWER'S OPINION:
There were many secrets kept by many people which did not unravel until toward the end of the book. There were still some unsolved secrets at the end, some of them probably to continue in a sequel. Other unresolved items frustrated me and could have been answered better in the book. I describe them in Spoilers below. I would have preferred more romantic development of the relationship between Jo and Elijah. We are told they were in love as teenagers and then separated. The main story begins 15 years later, where their paths cross and the relationship continues as if it had never stopped.

STORY BRIEF:
Jo and Elijah were in love as teens. Elijah's dad kicked him out of the house at age 19, and Elijah spent the next 15 years in the military. He comes home to Black Falls to recuperate from an injury and to investigate his father's recent death. Jo became a secret service agent in Washington, D.C. She returns to Black Falls on a short-term leave. Alex is killed, and his stepdaughter Nora fears for her life. Nora has been living in Black Falls. She packs a tent and hiking gear and plans to hide in the nearby mountains. Jo and Elijah try to find her.

DATA:
Story length: 368 pages. Sexual language: mild. Number of sex scenes: 4. Total number of sex scene pages: 9. Setting: current day Black Falls, Vermont area and Washington D.C. Copyright: 2008. Genre: romantic mystery suspense.


CAUTION SPOILERS:

IF YOU ARE THINKING OF READING THE BOOK, THEN DO NOT READ BELOW. IT GIVES AWAY SOME OF THE STORY.

I was confused as to (1) why Elijah never answered Jo's letters 15 years ago and (2) why he proposed to her 15 years later, after being together for just a few days. I wished the author developed the relationship more. I never understood why Jo and Scott didn't get along. I wish the author had a better explanation as to why Nora believed Melanie was bad. Instead, the author said it was Nora's intuition. I wanted to know why Devin didn't trust Elijah. Elijah and his brother had been good to Devin. Myrtle was an interesting character, but I wanted to know more about why her love was killed. At the end of the book, I still didn't know why all the deaths had occurred, other than some people "knew too much," but about what I didn't know. Nora definitely didn't know anything, so I wanted to know why the assassins wanted to kill her.

When Secret Service agent Jo Harper is caught on tape ripping Charlie Neal, the teenage son of the Vice President of the United States, a new one, her career suddenly takes a nosedive. While the incident with Charlie was a prank gone wrong, it was a humiliation that Jo could have lived without. Now she's been exiled to twiddle her thumbs in the small town of Black Falls, Vermont, where she has recently inherited a piece of land until the public furor dies down.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you want to look at it, Jo's first love, military hero and general tough guy Elijah Cameron, is also back in town, and Jo has definitely recaptured his interest. Recently critically wounded in Afghanistan, Elijah has recovered physically, though his heart has never healed from the pain of losing Jo all those years ago. Jo and Elijah were in love as teenagers, but the opposition of their families drove them apart, and they both went their separate ways. Now they are back where it all began, and it's obvious to both of them that their old feelings have never died.

Unfortunately, there are still ghosts between Jo and Elijah keeping them apart. Elijah's dad, Drew, recently perished of hypothermia in a snowstorm on the mountain named for his family, Cameron Mountain. But Elijah is not buying it. Something doesn't sit right with him that the man who knew the mountain better than anyone would die in such a fashion. Drew had visited Jo in Washington, D.C. only a short time before his death but never divulged to her that he was leaving her the land connected to the Cameron property.

As if Jo doesn't have enough to deal with, a prominent ambassador is mowed down in a mysterious hit-and-run accident, and his stepdaughter, Nora Asher, who just happens to be in Black Falls, takes off on a solo sojourn up Cameron Mountain.

A local boy to whom Nora has become close, Devin Shay, follows Nora up the mountain in order to see to her safety. Before long, a serious snowstorm moves into the area and the kids require rescuing from the elements. Devin has already suffered enough trauma since he was the one who discovered the body of Elijah's dad, Drew, a man who had been like a father to him, yet his friendship with and concern for Nora drive him on.

The elements are not the only problem for these two teenagers, however. They have crossed paths with the assassins responsible for more than one death and are now in the crosshairs of killers. Elijah and Jo, aware of the danger the kids are in, set off up the mountain together in order to rescue them from the dual danger they've found themselves in. Will they be in time, or will the kids become just another casualty of those with nefarious intentions?

COLD PURSUIT is the perfect name for this riveting read. Author Carla Neggers's passages are so descriptive that one almost finds one's teeth chattering from fear and anticipation as well as from the cold. While the chemistry between Jo and Elijah was practically hot enough to melt the falling snow, the chill from the emotionless and guiltless killers' icy hearts is enough to cause frostbite to our very souls.

--- Reviewed by Amie Taylor

Secret service Agent Jo Harper is put on administrative leave because while doing her duty an incident turns into an unfair YouTube scandal of her with the Vice President's merry prankster sixteen years old son Charles Preston Neal. She returns to her hometown Black Falls, Vermont hoping her fifteen minutes of sensationalism ends quickly so she can go back to work; her fear is her career is over.

Also back in town recovering from a war wound in Afghanistan is Special Forces Sergeant Elijah Cameron. Besides recuperating, Elijah investigates the death of his father Drew seven months ago.

At the same time, Jo's friend Thomas Asher witnessed the murder of former Ambassador to Great Britain Alex Bruni in a hit and run in which Thomas' daughter college age Nora fled into the mountains; Thomas's former wife and Nora's mom is Bruni's widow. Former lovers when they were teens until Drew ended their relationship, Jo and Elijah find their inquiries link; as they fall in love while investigating two murders and search for the missing girl, the killers seek Nora too.

This is an exciting romantic suspense thriller filled with humor and action as Carla Neggers brings the Green Mountain State to life. Jo and Elijah are tough and courageous, but inside both are vulnerable especially when it comes to the other. Readers will relish this exhilarating complex cat and mouse tale.

Harriet Klausner

Usually I devour everything by Carla Neggers. I was very excited to see she had a new book. I'll be honest - I didn't even finish this one. I felt like it was the sequel to a book I hadn't read. There were too many characters with too many back stories. I didn't care about anyone. I didn't even care how it ended. If this was your first Carla Neggers book, please don't give up on her. Her other books are wonderful!

I had a long train ride and purchased this book based on the fact that it said a New York Times Bestselling Author wrote it.
Unfortunately I found it poorly written, noncohesive and I at times wondered if the author had even read what she had written in the prior paragraphs. It felt like this author had written it while doing something else at the time (shopping? skiing? facebooking?) and did not put any actual effort into the often contradictory read. I finished it only because there was nothing else to read.

As a guy, I do want to point out that this is more highly recommended to the gal readers than to us guys. It is a well crafted thriller and one I personally enjoyed, but I was quite conscious of the fact that the author was sure to heap on the romantic elements for lady readers.And by calling it a thriller, I qualify it as being more suspense than action. Don't look for any deep insights here. This is pure escapist fiction and if you're looking for deep meanings, turn to writers like Michael Connelly, Karin Fossum and the like.But for relaxing and non-challenging summer type reading, you should enjoy this.

Carla Neggers newest entry may be her best work to date. And the good thing is it is the first in a series that only promises to get better. Jo Harper is a Secret Service agent tasked with guarding the Vice-President's family. When he precocious son, Charlie, causes her professional embarrassment, she retreats to her Vermont hometown only to encounter Elijah Cameron, the Special Forces soldier who was the love of her young life. When a prominent ambassador is killed and his young daughter goes missing from her town, Jo and Elijah spring into action. Together they unravel a dangerous plot in a challenging environment and at the same time untangle their own knotty relationship. Cold Pursuit has crackling action, genuine emotion, striking characters and a depth of realism that makes it all work. Neggers has taken a real step forward with this new one and she leaves the right amount hanging so that the promise of more to come from Black Falls is an exciting one.

Carla Neggers is one of those authors that I automatically purchase any new book she writes but I was very disappointed in this book. I got the feeling that her publisher told her she needed a book by a certain date and she just threw this one together to meet that deadline. The plot was disjointed with WAY too many loose ends that never did connect and too many coincidences, the writing and especially the dialogue was stilted and, as mentioned in other reviews, some of the relationships did not make sense and were never explained or resolved. Definitely not up to Ms. Neggers usually high standards.

Oh dear, where do I start? I've read books by Ms Neggers before and really liked them. I first picked up the second book in this trilogy and wondered if that was the reason why I was so completely confused. Thus, I laid the book aside and bought Cold Pursuit, the first one in the trilogy. Sadly, the confusion did not stop.

First, there are way too many characters that do not contribute at all to the plot. What possible contribution do the characters of Grit and Myrtle have? None.

Second, we are told that there is tension between Elijah and Jo with hints about something in their past. No mention of that event is made until nearly at the end of the book, when it is mentioned in passing.

Third, why were Drew and the ambassador assassinated? Nobody knows. Certainly not the reader by the end of the book. We are presented with this mysterious network of assassins that killed a Russian man in England (why?), Drew Cameron (why?) and Ambassador Bruni (why?). I wish I had answers to the 'why' questions, but no answer is provided.

The entire plot is thoroughly confusing, readers are presented with so much information that, because most of it is completely useless, in actual fact we don't know anything. People are being killed for some reason, the protagonists had problems with each other for some reason, the ambassador's stepdaughter escapes into the wilderness for some reason. Why? Don't ask me, I have no idea... I have all three books of the series, I guess I'll read number two and three to see if some answers are presented there... though I won't hold my breath! It feels as though Ms Neggers instructed some ghostwriter to write this messy book.

Secret Service Agent Jo Harper has retreated to her hometown after an embarrassing video surfaces on YouTube. Elijah Cameron, Jo's high school sweetheart, has also recently returned to Black Falls, Vermont after being injured in Afghanistan. Due to the fact that Elijah's father bequeathed part of the family land to Jo, they find themselves to be neighbors, reconnecting after 15 years. Elijah questions the circumstances of his father's death, an ambassador with ties to Black Falls is murdered in Washington, D.C., and the ambassador's step daughter is missing in the mountains of Black Falls. We know who committed the ambassador's murder almost immediately, but how do all of these pieces fit together? Who is behind these fateful events? Why?

That's the basic premise of the book, but in reality, there is so much more going on. We meet a slew of secondary characters, all of whom are interesting and well drawn. We meet Jo's brother and sister and the sister's friends, one of Elijah's brothers, Jo's uncle, a good friend of Elijah's, his best friend...LOTS of characters to keep up with.

One of these secondary characters made the book for me. Ryan Taylor, or Grit, is a SEAL who lost part of his leg in the same firefight in which Elijah was injured. His backstory is given out in little nuggets throughout the book, and I was in tears several times while reading the Grit-centric chapters. Ms. Neggers captured his sense of loss, his disbelief that life could ever be worth living again, and his survivor guilt without making Grit a maudlin mess. I will be reading Cold River and Cold Dawn to see how things are going with Grit. He completely captured my heart.

As far as the romance part of the book, well, things faltered a little bit. With the understanding that Jo and Elijah had a history, their coming together seemed natural. Elijah had left town as a teenager to join the Army, and to give Jo a chance to experience the life she wanted, away from the confines of their small hometown. There was not a lot of development, yet I didn't feel like their reunion was stilted so much as it wasn't the real focus of the book.

If you like a romance to go with your mystery, you will probably enjoy this book. I am new to Ms. Neggers work, and will be seeking out her back list as well as future titles.