Julie Weston Adler is a former Olympic skier who medalled in the sport of biathlon, which involves skiing and rifle shooting. She’s gracefully retired since marrying, but the vivid adventure of RUNNING COLD will see her revisiting her sports under stress.
Julie has a few close female friends in California, where she lives a nice life as entrepreneur Jeff’s wife, leaving the tech work and finances to him. That all ends when she arrives home to find him dead of an apparent suicide. After the funeral, Julie, still in shock, discovers the finances are considerably worse than she knew. She needs a job. Instinctively heading home, the Canadian woman arrives back in Banff where she used to train, and starts as a housekeeper at a luxury resort hotel. The manager, Remy Delatour, is delighted to see Julie again – December is hectic here, and he used to be sweet on her. But life keeps getting more complicated.
The strangest part of this story, for me, is that everyone is lying to their friends. Julie takes off without letting her friends know she is leaving the country, then deceives them about her job. Subconsciously she knows they can’t all be trusted. Her late husband was also lying to her. Remy has designs on Julie, and she’s barely widowed a week. With friendships like the ones in this book, who needs enemies?
The tale is narrated by a few different characters in turn, which is unusual, and after a while, one narrator is a female officer in the RCMP – the Mounties, mounted on vehicles these days. This is a crime story, and crime requires a detective. With deaths, a crime scene investigation in the normally peaceful resort town, and a blizzard pushing in to cover the mountains, the adventure starts slow but gets suspenseful fast.
This is a character-driven story, with Julie Adler, her Southern Californian friends Izzy, Suki and Christa, and French Canadian Remy generating much of the energy, and Monique, the investigator, trying to apply the brakes. There’s skiing and shooting, and I was astounded at how casually some people handle firearms, even in Canada. RUNNING COLD has a few spectacular scenes and a bitter-cold atmosphere. The town of Banff provides both a backdrop and a character, making me want to visit. But I might wait for the summer. The author Susan Walter has also been a screenwriter, and this is her fourth book.
In this heart-pounding story of deception, murder, and survival, a former Olympian retreats to the Canadian wilderness for a fresh start, only to find out that the past will always catch up to her.
Julie Adler’s perfect facade is shattered by grief when her husband commits suicide. His death reveals that their luxurious California life was a house of cards, and his secret business dealings have left Julie penniless.
As she strikes out on her own, Julie feels drawn to her old stomping grounds in Banff, a charming and isolated ski town where she once trained for the Olympics. She finds work as a housekeeper at a luxury resort, but just as she starts to piece together a new life, an eccentric guest turns up dead. And Julie, the last person seen in her hotel room, is the prime suspect.
The evidence is stacked against her, but even in the encroaching blizzard, Julie knows her way around these mountains. She just needs to evade the police long enough to find the truth behind the murder…and before the real killer finds her first.
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