Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsMystery Within a Mystery
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 28, 2013
I don't know which is better - reading these books in order or randomly skipping around. In this case I was very familiar with Lucas and Weather as a married team. I saw them early in their rocky courtship and later in their settled marriage. So I enjoyed this book where they meet for the first time. The mystery has several elements - the romance is part of it, Lucas ends up being very glad that Weather is not the kind of woman who does exactly what her man tells her to do! Some of the things you'll encounter are a group sex ring involving adults and their kids, people raising rabbits for food and people having their lives ruined when outed as homosexuals. These stories by Sandford have a basic rhythm: Big action up front to hook you, then a period of character and plot development, some subplots that can get you thinking in various directions and then hard, fast action to the end. After finishing each book, I have to go back in 30-40 pages and work back through the action to get everything sorted out properly. You get a mind set as you follow the slow suspense and then it changes a bit rather quickly at the end when you know everything. It is usually not quite as you figured. As usual, a lot of people die in this book.
This story takes place in northern Wisconsin during January. That is a very cold place. A side element of this story is how people cope with extreme cold weather (-20F). You park cars inside or you plug them into power so your engine block heater can keep the oil warm enough to flow for starting. You wear boots and snowshoes if you go off the trail. Everybody wears some kind of a hat or cap. Gloves or mittens are required whenever outside more than five minutes. Here in Alabama those things become distant memories until a book like this freshens them! It adds interest to the story for me. (It will get near 60F today here in Huntsville yet a week ago many people were stranded for nine hours or more on a nearby freeway.)
