Customer Reviews

Cold Hearted (Center Point Platinum Romance (Large Print))

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

 

 

A senator apparently has committed suicide after learning he has early onset Alzheimer's but in reality, someone close to him helped him pull the trigger. Hired by the senator's brother, PI Rick Carson thinks that the unemotional widow Jordan Price might be the culprit. As Rick delves deeper into Jordan's background, he discovers that many men have met an untimely death after getting involved with Jordan including a fiancé, a first husband, a colleague, and her former boss. After losing the love of her life in a car accident, Jordan gave up ever loving another and entered into a marriage of convenience with the senator and guards his privacy and legacy closely. When the senator's angry first wife blackmails Jordan then ends up dead, suspicion is further cast her way and Rick can't help but wonder whether Jordan will be his lover or his murderer or both.

Barton weaves an intriguing tale of a potential black widow and the gaggle of non-blood related family members that surround her. She effectively has readers pondering over who could be behind the deaths, as well as the motive. Savvy readers may find many plot similarities in common with Sandra Brown's "Where There's Smoke" right down to the senator's "secret" (that many might see coming). Barton manages to create a sympathetic heroine scarred by loss yet who isn't a doormat and pair her with an engaging and charismatic equal in a page-turning romantic mystery.

© Tracy Vest, September 2008

It is suspected that Senator Price's suicide was actually murder. The most likely suspect is his young widow, Jordan Price. Jordan remained stoic at the funeral and has a past that labels her a black widow: a dead fiancé and the deaths of her first and second husbands.

Rick Carson, investigator for the Powell Agency, takes the case. Everyone around Jordan seems to love her and can't believe she is capable of murder. But Rick has his doubts. Jordan has secrets and it is his job to discover the truth. The more he observes, the more he wonders if Jordan really is innocent. His suspect list is growing. Could it be a jealous family member, a bitter ex-wife, or an admirer who will stop at nothing?

I enjoyed reading this book. Barton does a wonderful job of balancing the romance and the suspense. The plot and pacing are great and the events and dialogue add to the overall tension and suspense. I guessed some of the twists and had to keep reading to find out what happened next. It was fun to guess motive, intentions and the identity of the culprit.

Cold Hearted will appeal to readers who enjoy suspense mixed with some romance. The attraction between the characters doesn't distract from the main story. There are enough clues for readers who want to try to figure out the identity of the murderer. I was three quarters of the way through and had narrowed my suspects down to three people. Reading the killer's creepy thoughts I had to decide if this person was cool and calculated or just plain delusional. This book is also great if you just want to be entertained.

Armchair Interviews says: Cold Hearted is a fast-paced romantic suspense.

All I can say is that considering her previous books this one seemed like it was written by someone else or by an amateur author...not up to her standards at all. I recommend you skip this book and pick out any of her previous ones which are really good.

I do not know how this book could have been better. To be fair to the author, I realized that I do not like the bodyguard themed books with the woman seeming so weak yet so strong. The author tried to show that the lead female character was the strong and dependable type, yet she "swooned" and "swayed" at least every other chapter.

It was not a smart read, not like the author's other books. This typically happens when the leads are not people you want to care about. I cared more about Nicole and Grif, than the lead characters here. The lead female character was annoying and it did seem like the lead male character acted on his hormones rather than anything else and I did not know enough about him to like him. He wasnt engaging at all, unlike this author's other male lead characters. I like this author's previous heroines like Nicole, not women whose physical attributes are so amazing men overlook a little thing like murder.

The problem with this book is the overdone formula of an enigmatic/beautiful/young/strong/vunerable/damsel in distress syndrome/married to a closeted and murdered senator/with too many red herrings as suspects. 3/4 of the book was a rehashing of the following themes:
1. she was a beautiful but possible murderess but possible saint
2. there is yet another secret she holds
3. the attraction between the two lead characters was oh so wrong but felt right.
4. somebody else did it.

Lisa York must be a brave narrative artist to take on this novel of a Black Widow killer. Why must she be so brave? The Beverly Barton novel's text drones on the same points over and over. It is easy to fall into a trap of boredom. York tries to keep the listener awake most of the time.

Once you get past some of the text's repeating verbiage, the mystery seems a slimmer version of the film Body Heat. Ms York tries to audio channel Kathleen Turner and in some spots, it does work . . . but overall. It stuns this crime noir. Barton may want to read some old copies of Black Mask to combine romance with crime.

Since this audio is more than eleven hours, I suggest you may take this on small trips. It tends to recap itself hourly for the mystery challenged.

So instead of buying, renting or downloading this one, rent Body Heat or The Postman Always Rings Twice.


Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD

I figured out the murderer in the first third of the book and frankly I didn't care if Jordan ended up one of his/her victims.

Jordan was a cold, unfeeling woman with no real passion. She hadn't shed a tear in 12 years, even with the death of two husbands and the miscarriage of a child. Yet everyone looked on her as a saint, adored by all. Mother Teresa would pale in comparison.

How stupid can you be? Someone in her family of leeches and the weak willed living at "Price Manor" with her is murdering people; there is no one else that could be doing it. Yet she refuses to accept that any of them did, thereby putting herself and others in danger.

I don't know why Rick was attracted to her, she had no real personality or depth.

I rushed to finish this one as it was so boring and if I'd heard one more thing about Robby Joe I'd have run screaming from the room.

Beverly Barton's books are hit and miss with many more hits than misses so I doubt I will ever stop reading her

I was looking for a good suspense book and never having heard of this author before, I thought I'd give it a try. I am pretty dissapointed and the only reason I read it in it's entirety was because I didnt want to waste my money.

The author seems to be fond of the words and phrases: gaze, their gazes collided/clashed, she closed her eyes, damn/damned, hesitated. she sighed, all right (and isn't the correct terminology in the context "alright"?) I kept seeing them at about just about every other page and it was annoying and gave the book the feel that it was written by an amateur.

I wanted to like the main characters but I couldn't. They have no depth to them, they seemed flat, there wasn't anything to make you feel like you really knew them. Like one of the reviewers said, I couldn't understand why Jordan was so loved. She bored me and there was nothing intriguing about her. Same with Rick. How could he in one thought think that he didn't like her but before you know it, you're reading that he wanted to take her in his arms. Mind you, this was only after knowing her for two or three days.

Well, at least I know not to buy her books again.

I was really disappointed with this book. After Ms. Barton's last few books, this one was a real stinker. I found the two main characters, Jordan and Rick, to be very shallow and unlikable. There was hardly any background on Rick's character and I thought Jordan was a cold fish. I don't see why everyone loved her so much. One minute she was taking care of everyone and soothing their fears, the next moment, she would think how she wished everyone would just leave her alone. It seemed to me that Jordan had a split personality--the loving caretaker, the cold hearted witch. I was convinced throughout most of the book that Jordan really was the murderer, that she had a split personality. I wished I had been right, because I think it would have made the book more interesting. When the real murderer is exposed, it was a disappointment. The `romance' between Jordan and Rick was tepid at best. During most of the book Rick thinks Jordan is a Black Widow, and then all of a sudden he's in love with her--not very convincing. I also thought the author spent way too much time rehashing the suspect list, Rick's suspicions of Jordan, and all the previous murders. I am generally a big fan of Ms. Barton, but this book missed the mark. It seemed to have been written by someone else or maybe she was being rushed by her publisher to crank out a new book. I'm glad I got the book from the library instead of plunking down my hard earned money on this stinker of a book.

Everyone who knew the late Senator Dan Price refuse to believe he committed suicide especially since he seemed to have everything now that he married Jordan. His brother Ryan refuses to accept the official declaration that Dan killed himself. He hires the Powell Private Security to uncover the truth. Rick Carson is assigned to head the investigation.

Rick watches the widow grieve at her husband's grave and can see why she has supporters amongst Dan's family and friends who insists she is a paragon. He wonders if she might be a black widow as he immediately suspects the worst of the twenty-four year old Jordan Price; although he also is mesmerized by her. Everyone in Jordan's tightly knit group insists that is impossible, but Rick remains unconvinced, especially when he learns of the other deaths that surround Jordan's past; her fiancé Robby Joe Wright in a car accident and her first spouse Boyd Bannon in a hunting accident. Despite his distrust, Rick falls under Jordan's spell as well; he becomes her alibi for the murder of the senator's first wife, who he knows was blackmailing his suspect. Rick wonders if he was set up by a brilliant sexy strategist black widow or is there someone even more diabolically clever using her as a victim of sorts.

Rick makes this thriller work as he falls in love even though he increasingly believes his beloved is a COLD HEARTED black widow. The story line is driven by the relationship between the sleuth and the widow as each is attracted to the other, but she senses his doubts. Fans will enjoy this tense suspense tale as Rick knows any man intimately involved with Jordan has a short life span; he hopes his focus is with his upper head, but from the moment he saw her at Dan's funeral, his blood went south.

Harriet Klausner

This was just awful. After 200 tedious (repeating the same things over and over) pages, I started to skim. One of the worst books I've read.