Cold As Ice - M.K. Gilroy

Cold As Ice

M.K. Gilroy

Sydney Lane Press, Aug 3 2015, $15.00

www.sydneylanepress.com

ISBN: 9780991212477

At four in the morning in zero degree weather CPD Homicide Detective Kristen Conner plans to jog in Central Park on her last day in the city before returning home to Chicago.  At the same time that Kristen begins her ill-advised run, someone murders church deacon and family man Edward Keltto.  While his wife Nancy feels guilty over her plans to leave Edward, his delinquent intoxicated taxi driver Medved Kublanov sees his passenger airborne.  As she continues her jog, Kristen stumbles across dying Frank Nelson who she later learns from NYPD was on the Homeland Security Flying Watch list.

NYPD allows Kristen to go home at a time the Russian Mafia begins a killing spree in the Big Apple.  After attending a counseling session, Kristen returns to work only to learn an unknown assailant murdered her mom’s neighbor.  Meanwhile the Russians are coming to eliminate the potential Big Apple witness; collateral damage to the innocent like Kristen’s mom is acceptable.

With a much more complex plot than above, the third tense Kristen Conner police procedural “whale” (see Cuts Like a Knife and Every Breath You Take) is an electrifying confrontational whodunit.  NYPD Detective Barnes sums up the heroine when he asks Kristen who runs at four in the morning in zero degree weather.

Harriet Klausner