Book Review: Cold Wind by Paige Shelton

Even though I had checked in and out of the first installment of this series, it ended on a cliffhanger and as this installment begins, the body found on the beach still has not been identified.

And since Beth Rivers has missed the August 15 deadline of leaving Benedict, Alaska for more survivable conditions, she still looks over her shoulder as the man who kidnapped her is still on the loose.

She's starting to become comfortable with her new surroundings and has making some friends (yet at a distance) as she goes back to writing while taking over the duties of The Benedict, a local type of newspaper.

Following a mudslide, the body of a frozen, nude woman is found in a trapper's shed and two mute girls show up at Beth's shed, where she does her writing.

The girls, Annie and Mary, are around eight years old and Beth calls police chief Gril Samuels to the shed. Since they don't speak, he turns them over to Beth's landlady Viola and another local woman, Maper. Between the two, they can't get the girls to talk, but Mary draws a picture of a house which belongs to the owner of the mercantile, Randy.

While the girls are in good physical condition, their single father, Tex, takes them back to their village and Beth begins to worry about them.

After getting more information from the detective working on her case in Missouri and a call from her mother, Mill, she notices the name of village where the girls live in Viola's office, and she decides to check up on them.

Her first stop that day is to Randy's house where she does some "investigating" and after hitting her head, she has a flashback to when she was held captive.

Following a brief checkup, she continues on and meets Tex. He tells her that the girls have no mother, but later his mother tells her that a woman dropped the girls off at the post office years earlier and disappeared.

Beth, still concerned about the girls' welfare, mentions that outside of Tex's house, there were some appliances, including a freezer, which could have housed the body of the mystery woman for the last half decade.

During a snowstorm that night, Beth becomes concerned when she gets a call from Viola who's stuck on the side of the road. She knows that she went out to Tex's house earlier in the day, but due to poor signals, she doesn't know where she's stranded at.

She and new resident, Ellen, head out to Tex's house and they search for Viola. Tex tells them that following the mudslide, an old logging road opened up and it was a shortcut to Benedict. They find her and the next day, they, along with Gril and his assistant Donner, head out to where Viola's truck is and find Tex waiting for them.

He tells them that he knows where an ice cave is and guides them. Viola remembers the cave and tells them that she and her sister Benny used to go exploring when they were kids. Only this time, they find identification as to who the frozen lady and man on the beach could be.

Since I'm not a fan of first-person novels, I admit that I would check in and out, but whenever there were scenes of dialogue, the pace of the story picked up.

I like how the major plot of Beth's kidnapping has continued into this installment and I can't say for certain, but at the end of this installment, Beth has started to get herself into shape and I think there's going to be a confrontation ala Laurie Strode and Michael Myers.

Shelton has ended this installment with a cliffhanger again and while Beth is hiding in the Alaskan wilderness, her secret has been discovered by one character, but the question is, do some of the other characters know who she is, and if so, are any of them working with her kidnapper back in the lower forty-eight?