Bethany House Publishers
Featuring: River Ryland; Tony St. Clair
336 pages ISBN: 0764240455 EAN: 9780764240454 Kindle: B0BLW7L25W Paperback / e-Book Add to Wish List
First in the Ryland & St. Clair crime series follows up a cold case that turns out to be all too hot. The COLD PURSUIT story begins as Special Agent River Ryland and her FBI partner, Special Agent Tony St. Clair, retire on grounds of health and start a St. Louis private detective agency. Which turns out to be more dangerous than they’d expected.
These are two dogged and skilled investigators. They previously wrote profiles that helped discover and jail serial killers. But one criminal tried drowning River and Tony was also injured, making him occasionally forgetful and less dextrous than usual. They are recovering. When I think about it, what jobs are these people trained for? PI seems to be the best fit. River is coping with her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease and she introduces Tony, although her family issues are still troubling the waters. They wait for a case… and then one is sent as a referral from a former colleague. A young man vanished while attending a concert with his high school friends. He has not been seen in the four years since.
PI stories I read mention that the lot of a firm is cases involving people skipping out on bills, bail bonds, or marriages. Those pay the rent. This agency has taken an office but not advertised, so I don’t know how they expect to pay rent. Because River and Tony are not in law enforcement, they are denied much logistical support and access. I did feel this novel has the disadvantages of PI work without many advantages. Neither person has a social life so they spend time together. Also, though it’s a teenager who is missing, no mention is made of social media posts. People take photos on a phone and leave them on the phone.
The antagonist is introduced early, though we are left unsure what part he will play. This is a young man with a chip on his shoulder, who suffers from a mental illness, schizophrenia, which causes him to hear voices. If he takes his meds, it’s controllable. But what makes sense to his social worker doesn’t always make sense to him, and he literally sees red. I don’t read horrific serial killer books but got on fine with this content, and there were no long passages in italics, which are too hard on the eyes.
Christian attitudes and hopes form topics of conversation, and River is shown struggling with the concept of faith. Tony, despite his injuries, has a calm conviction that all will work out for the best. Nancy Mehl shows her colours as an inspirational writer, with COLD PURSUIT an interesting start to a St. Louis crime series.
Ex-FBI profiler River Ryland still suffers from PTSD after a case that went horribly wrong. Needing a fresh start, she moves to St. Louis to be near her ailing mother and opens a private investigation firm with her friend and former FBI partner, Tony St. Clair. They're soon approached by a grieving mother who wants them to find out what happened to her teenaged son who disappeared four years ago. River knows there's almost no hope the boy is still alive, but his mother needs closure, and River and Tony need a case, no matter how cold it might be.
But as they follow the boy's trail, which gets more complicated at every turn, they find themselves in the path of a murderer determined to punish anyone who gets in his way. With a killer on the loose set on finishing the job he started, will River be pulled back into her tormented past or finally face the demons that haunt her?
With her trademark blend of page-turning thrills and intricate plots, Nancy Mehl delivers a spine-tingling thriller that will keep readers up all night.
Excerpt
River Ryland was convinced that madness exists only a breath away from genius. The man who stood in front of her and Tony had proven this to be true. He’d kept his identity hidden from the FBI’s best. Now River and Tony’s lives were about to end and there was no one to save them.
Moonlight caused the river to sparkle as if it were layered with precious jewels. But the image didn’t provoke a sense of beauty. It spawned a feeling of terror so deep and evil that her body betrayed her. She couldn’t move. Why were they even here? She and Tony were behavioral analysts for the FBI, not field agents. They wrote profiles for the agents who were trained to confront insanity. A call from another agent had brought them here. “Come and see,” she’d said. “It’s important. I think we got it wrong.”
This was someone they trusted. Someone whose opinion mattered. Jacki was so smart. So naturally intuitive. And so surely dead
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