17. Cold as Hell by Kelley Armstrong

#3 Haven's Rock

listened on Libby

341 pgs.

2025
Adult Mystery
Finished 4-13-25
Goodreads rating: 4.29
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary middle-of-nowhere, Yukon, Canada

My comments: It's great to be back with Casey and crew in the middle-of-nowhere Yukon.  Casey is now eight months pregnant, in a pregnancy that has had many worries and mishaps.  Their new community is only a little over a year old and they are working hard to make it safe and happy for all, when one of the female inhabitants is kidnapped, assaulted, and rescued in the nick of time.  Shortly after that, another female disappears, found murdered in a gruesome way.  All of Haven's Rock is shocked because everyone has been vetted extremely carefully so they know that no "crazies" have been let in.  How wrong they are.  The mystery is well written, and you know that near the end of the book there's going to be a very harried birth, complete with almost tragic results.  I do enjoy and look forward to every book in the series.

Goodreads synopsis:  Haven’s Rock is a sanctuary town hidden deep in the Yukon for those who need to disappear from the regular world. Detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, are starting a family now that they’ve settled into their life here. As Casey nears the end of her pregnancy, she lets nothing, including her worried husband, stop her from investigating what happens in the forbidden forest outside the town of Haven’s Rock.

When one of the town's residents is drugged and wanders too close to the edge of town, she’s dragged into the woods kicking and screaming. She’s saved in the nick of time, but the women of the town are alarmed. Casey and Eric investigate the assault just as a snowstorm hits Haven’s Rock, covering the forest. It’s there they find a frozen body, naked in the snow. With mixed accounts of the woman's last movements, the two begin to question who they can trust—and who they can't—in their seemingly safe haven.