Death in a Cold Hard Light [Hardcover]

Francine Mathews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1998

In Francine Mathews's Death in A Mood Indigo, Detective Meredith Folger's career hit new heights of terror and self-doubt.  Now Merry is more than ready for a peaceful vacation, or maybe even wedding plans.  So she is not pleased when her police chief father calls her home from Greenwich to investigate what looks like an accidental drowning.

The Coast Guard has just pulled a lifeless body from the frigid waters near the harbor jetties.  Twenty-one-year-old Jay Santorski--athlete, Harvard scholar, and part-time scalloper--should never have drowned in the December seas.  What was the young man doing out alone in the storm-churned bay? And where is Merry's police detective colleague, the shiftless Matt Bailey, who vanished the night Santorski died?

Over the objections of her fiancÚ Peter, Merry flies back to the island in the teeth of a nor'easter to start the investigation into the scalloper's death.  But as she questions Santorski's co-workers, friends, and housemates, the truth of the scalloper's character seems ever more elusive.  Was Jay an honest and caring friend--or a sneak thief? Did he really use heroin, or was he a health-conscious triathlete who feared addictive drugs? Why did he drop out of Harvard so suddenly, when marine biology meant so much to him? And why did he die with the missing Matt Bailey's phone number in his pocket?

Dead ends and false leads confront Merry at every turn--and Police Chief John Folger is behind too many of them.  As Merry delves further into the mystery of Jay Santorski, she feels increasingly isolated.  For the first time, she cannot trust her lifelong role model--her own father.

Forced to continue her search alone, Merry plunges into Jay's private world--a world of warring obsessions...between truth and seduction, addiction and redemption, between two women vying for possession of his soul: Hannah Moore, the brilliant and ruthless marine biologist, and Margot St. John, a blues singer with a mortal habit.  Behind them stands Owen Harley, Jay's friend and employer, a man with some obsessions of his own.

To learn what really happened in the midnight waters off Old North Wharf, Merry must confront the truth of her own past.  It's a case that will test her loyalties and strain her ties to the people she loves most.  What, finally, is more important--her need for justice, or for Peter Mason? Should she shield her father, or force him to shoulder his share of the blame? When a second body is found, her choice becomes agonizingly clear.  Merry cannot allow a dangerous killer to strike again....

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

During Nantucket's annual Christmas Stroll, the island's shop windows are filled with quaint wool blankets and antique barometers in an attempt to add some holiday cheer (and tourist dollars) to the area by encouraging wealthy mainlanders out to the island. But when a boatload of tourists rolls by a floating corpse on the way into town, it puts an inevitable damper on the festivities.

The drowned body turns out to be that of a young Harvard scholar-turned-scalloper with needle marks in his arm, and Merry is called home from vacation by her father, police chief John Folger, to investigate the drug-induced accident. Investigate an accident? Merry decides her father must know more than he's telling and, with a quick stop at the morgue, her hunch is confirmed. How did her father know to look for the pinprick-sized needle marks in the man's upper arm? Why did her father so confidently mention heroin as the cause of death when the patient's autopsy suggests otherwise: the pupil in his one remaining eye is dilated rather than constricted, the usual sign of heroin use.

Merry's fully aware of her precarious situation. By solving the case, she'll most likely uncover the damaging evidence that her father's withholding; by failing to solve it, she'll lose her father's professional respect, which Merry's afraid she may have already lost after having botched her last homicide case. But she can't stop puzzling over one question: Why would a man with something to hide want his own daughter to investigate the case?

Mathews has used the Nantucket backdrop to full effect; the island's raw, blustery weather sets an eerie scene, whether it's during a young woman's phone call to her dead friend or when two teenagers dredge up scallops and some revealing jetsam. Mathews may have tried to cover too much ground in Death in a Cold Hard Light, bringing Merry's professional credibility as well as her relationship with her father and her soon-to-be fiancé into the picture, but the book is at its most intriguing when it focuses on the puzzling case itself. --Kris Law

From Library Journal

Nantucket police detective Merry Folger (The Lems of the North, LJ 9/1/96) is called back from vacation with her beloved Peter Mason by her police chief father to investigate the murder/drowning of young Jay Santorski, who has taken a break from his Harvard studies to wait tables and work as a part-time scalloper. Jay seems to have been too talented, too good to have died in the frigid winter waters, but needle marks on his arm indicate drug abuse. Matt Bailey, the Nantucket policeman whom Merry has never liked, is also missing, and Merry is unhappy with the way the case just cannot make sense. Environmental pollution and wealth from ill-gotten gains bring Merry to a sad conclusion and promise of more in the series to come. Mathews writes appealingly, making her characters human, fallible, and thoughtful and her story line always believable. Essential for all mystery collections, as is the author's Jane Austen series under her pen name Stephanie Barron.
-AAlice DiNizo, Raritan P. L., NJ
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; 1ST edition (June 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553104640
• ISBN-13: 978-0553104646
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,173,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Francine Mathews, who also writes as Stephanie Barron, is the author of twenty novels of mystery, history, and suspense. A graduate of Princeton and Stanford, she spent four years as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, and presently lives and works in Colorado.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great addition to earlier books in the series, July 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Death in a Cold Hard Light (Hardcover)

Detective Merry Folger fans will enjoy this novel. The pace is good, the descriptions (both of things physical and of things emotional) are vivid and true. We learn more about Merry and her relationships. The many references to the "Osborne case" (a case in a previous book) got under my skin a bit and took away from whatever moment was happening in the story. A must read for those who want to grow with all the characters in the series.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real good mystery read, May 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Death in a Cold Hard Light (Hardcover)

Jay Santorski's body has been pulled out of the frigid waters near Nantucket Island by the Coast Guard. Though anyone who knows the deceased could not accept the probable cause of death, John apparently is the victim of an accidental drowning. The Nantucket Chief of Police John Folger recalls his daughter, police detective Meredith, who is on a much needed vacation with her fiancé Peter Mason, to oversee the investigation. Over the irate objections of John, she flies home in a nasty storm to take charge of the official inquiry.

Meredith quickly realizes that the character of the victim remains out of focus as there are two conflicting opinions about the man. She soon discovers a possible heroin connection and subsequently two more suspicious deaths follow. Leads stop cold or go down the wrong path. Many of these are fed to Meredith by her own father, who may be covering up the disappearance of a fellow officer that possibly is tied to the Santorski case. Though she constantly argues with her father and her lover, Meredith continues to seek the truth behind the Santorski death.

DEATH IN A COLD HARD LIGHT is a great addition to a top rate series. The fourth Folger book has a strong premise that is brilliantly developed into a fine story line. However, what makes this particular novel so good is the insight into Meredith's relationships with her loved ones, especially her father. This reviewer strongly recommends all the novels in this series and the Francine Mathews' Jane Austen mysteries(under the name Stephanie Barron) for anyone who enjoys fine characterization, atmospheric mystery, and a fun to read plot.

Harriet Klausner

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Formulaically Nebulous, October 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Death in a Cold Hard Light (Hardcover)

Apparently "Death in a Cold Hard Light" was named because the words 'cold hard light' where stated 5 times in the first chapter. The book was formulaic but attempted to avoid being by casting nebulous and dark shadows over the characters motivations and thought processes. Merry, who is previous books was a clear bright spot in the otherwise overlong scenic descriptions of nantucket, in this book, she is written in with such abstraction that you have no idea what she is even thinking. It's always been my opinion that characters in sequels or series should be basically true to thier own nature, unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case with poor Merry. I get the distinct feeling that "Death in a Mood Indigo" was the pinicale of this series. I can say without hesitation I won't be reading any more of this series and I won't miss it at all.