Chill Factor: A Novel

Clearly, North Carolina Clearly is the type of town that the biggest criminal activity is parking violations. Now though there have been four women that have disappeared without a trace over the past two years. The only clue is a blue ribbon left at each of the abduction sites. There are no suspects for who is abducting the woman. Now another woman has disappeared without a trace. Lilly Martin has returned to the sleepy mountain town of Clearly to close on the sale of her mountain cabin that is marking the end of her marriage to Dutch Burton the town of Clearly’s chief of police. Dutch is having a problem letting her go which is proving to be an obstacle for Lilly. Trying to out run the storm that is bearing down on Clearly Lilly ends up skidding her car on the icy road and strikes a man that has emerged out of the woods on foot. Lilly quickly recognizes Ben Tierney as the injured man and who she met the previous summer. Now with the storm on top of them they are forced to wait it out at the cabin. As the length of their confinement mounts Lilly begins to wonder if the storm is the biggest threat she faces. The biggest danger just might be the man that is beside her. Now Lilly has to figure out if Ben Tierney is the feared abductor or is who he claims to be is the truth. The man that has rescued her from harm and from the tragedy that haunts her. This is a story that keeps the twists and turns coming throughout the whole book. The suspense keeps building until the very end. This is one book that pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go until the very end when everything is completely revealed. Just as the reader thinks they have it figured out another twist comes to make them doubt everything they think they know about this one. The action and suspense keep the story moving along at a fast pace but the reader is never lost and will stay in a story that comes to life with every word that is read. This definitely one book that readers should take the time to read.

The ink isn't quite dry on Lilly Martin's divorce papers when she and her ex-husband, Dutch Barton, part for the last time after selling their mountain cabin in Cleary, Virginia. Dutch keeps trying to win her back, but Lilly is through with him, and the emotional exhaustion brought on by their last meeting has her falling asleep when she should be heading back down the mountain before the weather gets bad. When she wakes up and takes off, she winds up hitting hiker Ben Tierney and crashing her car. The two of them limp back through the woods to Lilly's cabin to wait out the storm, where they both reminisce about the first time they met on a kayaking trip the summer before. Attraction had flared between them, but Lilly put Tierney off because she was still married. Just when Ben thinks he may have a second chance with Lilly, however, she stumbles upon his backpack, which is full of incriminating evidence tying Ben to the disappearances of five women in Cleary over the past two years. With cell phone service spotty at best and roads made completely impassable by a raging blizzard, Lilly is stuck with a man who just might be a serial killer. Before her suspicions about Ben arise, she manages to get a partial call to her ex-husband, who happens to be Cleary's chief of police, but the call is just enough to get Dutch Barton's dander up. Dutch has a lot of problems, between his wife divorcing him, being fired from the Atlanta PD, the parents of a missing girl showing up at the police station at all hours to pester him about progress on the case, and now Lilly is shacked up in the mountains with another man. To make matters worse, a couple of interfering FBI agents show up to take over his investigation, and they aren't showing him the respect he deserves. Dutch's best friend, Wes Hamer, is the high school football coach and on the city council. For his own reasons, he is just as anxious to reach the mountain cabin before anyone else, and they're all wrapped up in his football star son's relationship with one of the missing women. The whole quiet town of Cleary is a hotbed of secrets, between a school teacher and her secret lover, the police chief's problems, and Wes Hamer's infidelities, which all seem to be tied to the disappearances of the five women. While the tension heats to the boiling point in town, Lilly and Tierney have their own issues to deal with, between her asthma, his injuries, and the evidence she keeps finding that points to him as the killer, every time she's just about to trust him. Once again, Sandra Brown delivers a page-turning suspense story that bounces from character to character, creating more questions than answers as the story unfolds. Living in Minnesota, the only issue I had was with the woeful inadequacies at the cabin. Don't they have insulation in Virginia to prevent water pipes from freezing? Who keeps their woodshed so far from the cabin that it's such a production to collect firewood? From the moment the first snowflake flew, I had to wonder why nobody was using snowmobiles. That's just a no-brainer around here, and they are not at all difficult to drive, as implied in this story. They also do not have to keep to the roads, and when there is snow on the ground they can zip over all sorts of terrain, through the woods and otherwise. Those colloquial things aside, however, this was a quality suspense thriller that kept me guessing to the very end, and I give it a strong recommendation.

I really enjoyed this book I liked the fact the book ended and I did not have to buy a second book to continue reading - I enjoyed the fact the you weren't sure till the end who the actual killer was Thanks Sandra great book

toujours convaincu que Sandra Brown est un très bon auteur et que j'ai lu presque tous ses livres. Certains ne sont pas toujours aussi réussi mais celui-ci vaut le coup. Bonne lecture

Eu gostei. É um livro , no idioma inglês , cujo argumento eu gosto Obrigado

I was on the edge of my seat from the beginning to the end. I changed my mind many times throughout as to who the guilty person was. Fantastic read.

Another great read from Sandra Brown, her stories have everything you need, intrigue, suspense, a great who done it and romance to top it off. Have read 12 of her books so far and have enjoyed them all and will continue till I've read them all