The Cold Truth

Rating:
Summary: I can't believe
Review: I can't believe anyone liked this book. It is an insult to the reader. It is poorly writen, the characters are stereo-types and not developed at all. Their internal dialogue is histrionic. This makes me wonder about the publishing world. Truely awful.

Rating:
Summary: The Cold Truth -- A chilling novel by an outstanding author
Review: If you love real drama that leaves you wanting to read more and more just to find out whodunnit, this is the book. Stone did an excellent job of not only making this not-so-typical "whodunnit" a cliff hanger, she brought in elements of everyday life so even us non-cops can enjoy this police thriller. This is a certain must read.

Rating:
Summary: Five stars aren't enough!
Review: Make sure you start this book early in the day, because once you get on this roller coaster you can't get off. Not that you'd want to. This is a white-knuckle thrill ride that captures you from the first word on (a most original first word, at that). The characters stayed with me long after I finished the book. And the plot ... incredible! I'm still playing the twists over and over in my mind, wondering why I didn't see them coming (I guess that's why it's called a mystery). Surprises around every corner. Powerful drama. Endless suspense. Here's the cold truth on "The Cold Truth": Read it!!

Rating:
Summary: THE COLD TRUTH is a brilliant debut novel
Review: Set in the cold environs of Upstate New York, THE COLD TRUTH does not disappoint. This book continually twists and turns. Jonathan Stone has written a thriller that not only keeps you turning the pages at an alarmingly fast rate, but he keeps you guessing until the very end. I can't express enough how this book just grabs you from page one and takes you on a ride through the cold snow, the well-written characters and the elaborate plot to a conclusion that will shock you.

Rating:
Summary: Fast, easy, engrossing
Review: This book got such promising reviews that I really expected to like it. Unfortunately, it has nothing going for it. No suspense. No real mystery. The characters are poorly drawn and developed. And the relationship between the two main characters was unbelievable and contrived. Stone needed a better editor. In all a total disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: The worst book I've read all year and I've read a LOT
Review: This book is awful, the plot twists are thoroughly unbelievable. The main character is your usual woman character written by a male author, she is a drop dead gorgeous, could be a model but somehow became a policeman,and of course has the usual "too full breasts and too slim hips". Please, what a surprise!

Rating:
Summary: The worst book I've read all year and I've read a LOT
Review: This book is awful, the plot twists are thoroughly unbelievable. The main character is your usual woman character written by a male author, she is a drop dead gorgeous, could be a model but somehow became a policeman,and of course has the usual "too full breasts and too slim hips". Please, what a surprise!

Rating:
Summary: Great first effort!
Review: This book was a page turner from the very beginning. A wonderful first effort for the author. Although the relationship between the two main characters seemed at times implausible, the actual story was not adversely affected. The setting and characters were not overly developed, but were described adequately to tell the tale; while some reviewers saw this as a flaw, it allowed focus on what was a very good story. As far as the movie goes, Angelina Jolie as the heroine and Brian Dennehey (or if you want an added twist which may or may not work, Morgan Freeman) as the police chief.

Rating:
Summary: Smalltown Snowbelt Madness
Review: This psychological thriller has all the trappings of a stage production. There are four main characters and three of them are possible suspects for a brutal murder. In spite of some chase and action scenes, the story essentially takes place in the police station, the police chief's home and in a car. The secondary characters are hazy and almost faceless.

The protagonist, Julian Palmer, is by her own and everyone else's estimation, a babe. She has the usual beautiful girl's complaint that none see her, only her gorgeous exterior. However, Julian is by no means all fluff; she is a complex slightly eccentric woman. The reader is privy to her thoughts, but none of the other characters. The legend-in-his-own-lifetime police chief, Winston "Bear" Edwards, about 65, is a huge man, powerful both physically and mentally. He has a perfect solve record for his entire career. Mrs. Edwards, Estelle, is almost as large as her husband is a commanding woman who keeps a perfect Victorian house. She is talkative, strange, and repressed. It appears that Mr. and Mrs. Edwards are almost afraid of each other, have many secrets both together and apart. The last character is the psychic, Wayne Hill, a peculiar will o' the wisp man with many self-contradictions.

Julian has signed up as a winter intern in small-town Cannanville to have the opportunity to observe Chief Edwards in action. Her first meeting with him is tumultuous first because of her name, he was expecting a man, and secondly because of his unsettling intuitive mind. He has an unsolved murder of a 21-year old waitress marring his perfect record, and he is obsessed with solving it so he can go off to his retirement in a blaze of glory. To keep his mind focused, he has graphic photos of the brutally slain girl pinned up across from his desk, so he can more readily concentrate. He is so barren of clues, he agrees to hire a local psychic who claims to have insights into the crime. Julian is very sexually drawn to the much older Edwards. She cannot answer to her own satisfaction if he is deliberately drawing her to him, or if it is her need for a father. Mrs. Edwards insists that she move from her motel to the apartment in their restored barn. She has dinners with the couple and is baffled by their relationship and the miasma of tension around them.

Clues pile up and point in different directions. Julian is in a constant state of flux, first thinking the evidence points to Estelle, then Edwards, then the psychic in rapid order. I agree that this whipsawing of doubt and suspicion is a very normal human thinking procedure, but when confronted with it on the written page, it is unnerving. When the climax came, I was more relieved than anything.

Mr. Stone has done an excellent job with his four characters. They are nuanced and intelligently done. The interweaving of snow descriptions with the action is wonderfully apt. The problem with the book is Julian's suspicions do not really take shape until the story is half over. Then it is a helter skelter race to the finish line. The story was badly in need of pacing and some of these elements of suspense and suspicion should have been introduced much earlier. I think Mr. Stone has a lot of talent and a great deal of originality, but I believe he loaded his story with more baggage than its fragile frame could bear.