The Cold Room

Alright, catching up on JT Ellison for you guys. I actually read The Cold Room just last month, in anticipation of the release of Ellison's latest title, The Immortals. I'd fallen just one book behind and was damn sure not going to let it go any further than that!

What probably gets me most about Ellison is the fact that she hasn't seemed to run out of any steam. Not everyone can be a winner with every reader every time. Ellison has not let me down, though. With each new title, she takes the series further, letting readers see more and more into the lives of her two characters (and side characters as well). I feel connected to them. When I read one of Ellison's books, I get immersed in Taylor and Baldwin's world. This is, to me, a sign of a really great author, and the goal with any book that I read: I want to leave behind the everyday and get caught up, just for a little while, in a world that's not my own.

NOTE: Possible spoilers if you haven't read the rest of the series.

In The Cold Room, Taylor Jackson has been demoted to detective. Forced to answer to someone else, forced apart from her team, she's finding it a bit difficult to bite her tongue and let someone else be in charge. And rightfully so. But she has no other choice. And with the Pretender still out there taunting her, the pressure is mounting. Her latest case involves the murder of a young woman, seemingly starved to death and posed in a grotesque homage to Picasso. The scene is strikingly similar to a string of murders in Italy and England that Baldwin has been investigating. The killer reporters are calling The Conductor, may be one and the same, but minute differences and the trans-continental killing spree would have Baldwin and Taylor believe, or perhaps hope, otherwise. As the killer searches out his newest victim, the two investigators uncover disturbing clues to the motivations behind these crimes.

I never want to give too much away, but you simply must read Ellison's Authors Note when you finish this one. Her inspiration for this one and the research that is out there is fascinating, and disturbing.