The Killing Place

Synopsis:

In Wyoming for a medical conference, Boston medical examiner Maura Isles joins a group of friends on a spur-of-the-moment ski trip. But when their SUV stalls on a snow-choked mountain road, they’re stranded with no help in sight.

As night falls, the group seeks refuge from the blizzard in the remote village of Kingdom Come, where twelve eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned. Something terrible has happened in Kingdom Come: Meals sit untouched on tables, cars are still parked in garages. The town’s previous residents seem to have vanished into thin air, but footprints in the snow betray the presence of someone who still lurks in the cold darkness—someone who is watching Maura and her friends.

Days later, Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli receives the grim news that Maura’s charred body has been found in a mountain ravine. Shocked and grieving, Jane is determined to learn what happened to her friend. The investigation plunges Jane into the twisted history of Kingdom Come, where a gruesome discovery lies buried beneath the snow. As horrifying revelations come to light, Jane closes in on an enemy both powerful and merciless—and the chilling truth about Maura’s fate.

My Opinion:

In Ice Cold, Gerritsen goes a bit out of the norm for her. Dr. Maura Isles goes to a medical conference that quickly turns bad when she makes the decision to go on an adventure with a friend from college. One sketchy gas station, one scary but non-lethal car accident and more than a few bad decisions left this group of four adults and one thirteen year old girl stranded in a town whose residents seem to have completely disappeared. With no one knowing where she went, Maura was left on her own with a band of not so helpful refugees to survive in this ill fated town during a snow storm that threatens their very lives.

While most of the Rizolli and Isles books were murder mysteries where we followed detective Jane Rizolli and Dr. Maura Isles solve a murder (that generally winds up being a serial killer) in " The Killing Place", we were instead following Isles as she struggled for survival after one terrible decision.

The book did,of course, have mystery to it, though the dead bodies really don't start piling up until closer to the end.  I enjoyed reading it...