{"id":2447,"date":"2013-02-06T01:51:52","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T06:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/?p=2447"},"modified":"2013-04-14T19:36:54","modified_gmt":"2013-04-14T23:36:54","slug":"book-review-a-cold-and-lonely-place-by-sara-j-henry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2013\/02\/book-review-a-cold-and-lonely-place-by-sara-j-henry.html","title":{"rendered":"Book Review : A Cold and Lonely Place by Sara J. Henry"},"content":{"rendered":"

[amazon_link id=”0307718417″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]\"A[\/amazon_link]Title : A Cold and Lonely Place
\nAuthor : Sara J. Henry
\nGenre : Mystery
\nPublisher : Crown\/Random House
\nPages : 304
\nSource : Netgalley\/Publisher ARC
\nRating : 4\/5<\/strong><\/p>\n

Troy Chance is a journalist at a small newspaper in Saranac Lake, in the cold snow-filled Adirondack mountain country of New York. As she is covering the construction of the ice palace, a yearly ritual in their small town, she and others come across a dead body encased in the thick ice of Lake Flower. The body is of someone known to Troy and others \u2013 Tobin Winslow, a recent addition to their town, a well-to-do, handsome and charming drifter, seemingly estranged from family, making do with odd jobs and his trust fund. The death is not being considered an accident and the prime suspect is Jessamyn Fields, Tobin\u2019s girlfriend and Troy\u2019s housemate (Troy rents out rooms to visitors and other townspeople).<\/p>\n

Tobin\u2019s death brings his sister Jessica Winslow, who goes by Win, to town. When Troy is entrusted to write a series of articles on Tobin\u2019s tragedy, Win offers to help Troy find information about Tobin\u2019s life. It comes to light that Tobin and Win\u2019s elder brother Trey also died by drowning. But that\u2019s not all \u2013 there are more skeletons in the closet and Troy can\u2019t help herself from digging further inspite of the furtive attacks on her home and car.<\/p>\n

This book develops as an atmospheric mystery. The cold weather, the snow, the ice are a big part of the story. This is a \u201ccold and lonely place\u201d but it is home to Troy, our intrepid and curious heroine, and the narrator of this book. An introvert, Troy has a few, strong friends and many acquaintances. There are also some romantic entanglements but never to the point where she feels strongly enough about it. I found her a likeable heroine \u2013 she\u2019s measured and calm and dependable, a good friend and a decent person. Much of her character came through in her interactions with her housemates, with Jessamyn and with Win. On the negative side, I found her relationships a bit one-sided; friends applauded everything she wrote, and halted their lives to rush to her side when she needed succor \u2013 I didn\u2019t see her reciprocating. Troy, involuntarily, seems to be the star here. This isn\u2019t really a problem, except we seem to harp a bit too much about it which seems to conflict with her otherwise self-deprecating character.<\/p>\n

The book itself was engrossing \u2013 I breezed through it. In the first half of the book, Henry\u2019s writing flows through the narration \u2013 she tells us all the important bits with a little bit of philosophy thrown in. Succinctly, no words wasted; just wonderfully constructed sentences which seemed to string me along.<\/p>\n

I’ve never seen the logic in drinking to excess – it makes people act stupid and feel bad later. But plenty of locals drink hard and regularly, and many vacationers seem to think it’s a requisite for stepping foo in town. More than once I’ve hollered out of my bedroom window at two a.m. at firemen here for a convention and so drunk they couldn’t find their way back to their motel. Maybe visiting horse-show people got plastered as well, but didn’t wander the streets being loud about it. Maybe they sat around in their trim riding jodhpurs and nest buttoned shirts and got quietly, desperately, privately drunk.<\/p>\n

Even I knew if somebody had imbibed enough they might think it a great idea to amble across a half-frozen lake. Alcohol seems to go a long way toward convincing people they’re immortal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Towards the second half, the writing got clunkier. Unrelated events seem to seep in to the main story and we meander into off-shoots that may have no relevance to the current investigation. This is a murder mystery, so I was a little puzzled that Troy\u2019s investigations seem to hark back into past events that much. Of course it becomes clear in the end \u2013 a rather anti-climactic end, I might add.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never read Sara Henry before. Wondering what the references to Troy\u2019s earlier case were, I looked her up to find that her first book \u201cLearning to Swim\u201d was an Anthony, Agatha, Marry Higgins Clark award winner for 2012, and the start of the \u201cTroy\u201d series. Well, this book seemed just as good, halfway in. I couldn\u2019t put it down; it was riveting. Post the halfway mark, things started to slow down for me and the end was somewhat of an anti-climax. I believe that it might be in how this book is viewed \u2013 this is not a standard \u201cmystery\u201d. Rather, if you come at it from a \u201cthe story of the mysterious murder\u201d kind of way, you might find greater satisfaction.<\/p>\n

Still, this is a wonderful read. If you are looking for a literary novel with a strong element of mystery to it, this would be a great pick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[amazon_link id=”0307718417″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][\/amazon_link]Title : A Cold and Lonely Place Author : Sara J. Henry Genre : Mystery Publisher : Crown\/Random House Pages : 304 Source : Netgalley\/Publisher ARC Rating : 4\/5 Troy Chance is a journalist at a small newspaper in Saranac Lake, in the cold snow-filled Adirondack mountain country of New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85,71,53,3,9,45,52,89,4,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-85","category-4_star_rating","category-arc","category-books","category-culture-and-society","category-mystery","category-netgalley","category-random_house","category-review","category-women"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"[amazon_link id=”0307718417″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][\/amazon_link]Title : A Cold and Lonely Place Author : Sara J. Henry Genre : Mystery Publisher : Crown\/Random House Pages : 304 Source : Netgalley\/Publisher ARC Rating : 4\/5 Troy Chance is a journalist at a small newspaper in Saranac Lake, in the cold snow-filled Adirondack mountain country of New…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2539,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447\/revisions\/2539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}