Dead of Winter

Have we been holding back on the raw carnage? If so, this book will more than make up for that. It’s winter, and Christa, our narrator, and her boyfriend, Kiernan, join a tour group of eight headed to a splendid lodge in the Rocky Mountains. But en route the weather turns nasty, a huge pine tree blocks their road, and they are forced to seek shelter in an abandoned hunting cabin as the snow piles up. Alarm bells ringing yet? The plot is squarely in the tradition of locked-room mysteries, more often locked mansions or islands these days, and we can expect our eight participants to slowly get bumped off thanks to poison, asphyxiation, or other genteel means. Well, that’s half correct. For most of the novel, the characters are locked in, thanks to the storm, unable to stray much beyond the cabin. But death in this novel is anything but genteel. In fact, it’s downright terrifying. But even more disturbing is Christa’s plight; obsessively assessing her peers to determine whom, if anyone, she can trust. Coates is also a horror author, and there’s a good dollop of that genre woven through this novel of high suspense. Keep a cat or two on your lap when reading this one.