"The beast is rarely marked on the outside." This is a quote taken from Chief of Police Craig Denver as he comes to grips with the idea that the deviant responsible for the grizzly murders in his and neighboring shorefront towns could be anyone -- including a familiar face. Now the problem at hand is how to separate the ugly and evil from the good. Detective Cass Burke is a survivor, against all odds, of a violent crime that decimated her family when she was six years old. In COLD TRUTH, Cass is brought face to face with the horror surrounding her childhood and the reader lives it with her. Slowly but surely her encounters with these graphic scenes churn up unresolved feelings and issues surrounding the murder of her mother, father and sister that happened before her very eyes. It is quite obvious that there is deep seated grief and anguish still to be vented before she can finally get on with her personal life. Through the character of Cass you delve into the psyche of child survivors and marvel at the resiliency of a child who develops into a caring, smart, resourceful adult whose career choice is helping other victims. The reader is introduced to the killer's mind from the onset of the book. We see what he sees, we hear what he hears and we feel what he feels as he chooses his next victim and carries out still another frightening act. The reader finds themselves saying "oh no" and "watch out."

This is a remarkably well thought out detective story about an abhorrent series of homicides spanning more then a quarter century from coast to coast. Armed with an arsenal of scientific investigative tools including the ability to share case knowledge with any place in the world, early cases can be reexamined for clues. These tools produce a timeline of murders too similar to be a coincidence. The task at hand in Stewart's book is getting to the root of all these facts to get to the truth -- The Cold Truth -- as in cold cases that seemingly had no solutions or in some faulty solutions. That is until these "coincidental" cases are thrown together by a very shrewd group of people and then it's a race against time to identify the murderer and finally stop this series of homicides. The reader will be tempted to skip to the end to see who the killer is -- but don't -- the ride is the best part. If you've never read Mariah Stewart COLD TRUTH is sure to make you an instant fan.