Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen

"Since her days as a medical student, it was the autopsy room, and not the patient's bedside, where she'd felt most comfortable. The dead don't expect you to make small talk or listen to their endless complaints or watch while they writhe in pain. The dead are beyond pain, and they don't expect you to perform miracles you are incapable of. They wait patiently and uncomplainingly as long as it takes for you to finish your job."
                                            -from the novel

After plodding through Deadly Heat by Richard Castle, I whipped through this one in less than 3 days! What a difference in the pace and clarity of the story and the writing skill! Isn't it ironic though, that these two titles are so similar but almost opposites? I just realized that as I began this entry.

The story focuses on Boston Medical Examiner Maura Isles in the beginning, as she attends a conference in Wyoming and on the spur-of-the-moment decides to go skiing with an old acquaintance she meets there. When the party of five gets lost and then stuck in a heavy snow and with no cell phone service, they are forced to look for shelter. They discover an abandoned village with many hints of a mysterious past. When one of the traveling companions is horribly injured, the situation is even direr.

When Maura starts out to try to find help, she is apprehended by a mysterious man. When Maura's friend, Boston Detective Jane Rizzoli, hears that she is missing she, her husband and Maura's lover, all rush to Maura's last known location to begin a search. There are many twists and turns in the plot as the story goes back and forth between Maura's situation and Rizzoli's search efforts. After a while both Maura and Rizzoli's team discover separately that the abandoned village had been recently inhabited by a religious sect called The Gathering led by a charismatic, but seemingly evil "prophet," Jeremiah Goode. Clues begin to shed light on a possible mass suicide eerily reminiscent of Jonestown in Guyana, the Branch Davidians in Waco and Heaven's Gate in San Diego. It's an intriguing plot with very unsettling revelations. As I indicated, your mind will get jerked around as you try to predict what will happen next. It makes Ice Cold a page turner in the first degree! It rates a 5 from me.