“Creepy.” That is how I would describe Sandra Brown’s romantic suspense novel, Chill Factor. Creepy characters, creepy situations, creepy morals, creepy tone… just creepy.
The novel opens with character Ben Tierney, a ruggedly handsome writer of articles for outdoor adventure magazines, standing beside a freshly dug, shallow grave and picking up a shovel to carry to his car. He muses on the disappearance of five women in the small community of Cleary, NC, on his way to the car. Tierney notes that with weathermen predicting the worst winter storm in recent memory only a fool, or someone with pressing business to take care of like him, would have ventured onto the mountain that day. Ice is beginning to coat the trees and his windshield when Tierney discovers his car won’t start.
Meanwhile, heroine Lilly Martin is also on the mountain, clearing out her recently sold vacation home with her ex-husband, Cleary police chief, Dutch Burton. Lilly, anxious to return to her job as a magazine editor in Atlanta and be rid of her former life, rebuffs Dutch’s attempts to reconcile and picks a fight to get him to leave the cabin. Exhausted by the exchange she lies down and falls asleep. When she awakens the storm outside is raging. She hurriedly leaves and with almost zero visibility begins her harrowing drive down the mountain. Suddenly a figure jumps into the roadway and Lilly skids into him, off the road and into a tree.
Of course the figure is Tierney. The car is too damaged to drive. There is no cell phone service. Lilly has no choice. If they are to survive, they must return to the cabin. Tierney has a head and possible internal injuries. Lilly is suspicious. Why is he on the mountain in such bad weather and why did he jump in front of her vehicle? Trapped in the cabin with no hope of escape or possible rescue due to the storm, Lilly wonders if Tierney is the serial killer.
Brown kept me guessing. The suspense kept me reading quickly. The first chapter focuses on Tierney. The next one focuses on Lilly. Then there is a switch in the action to the side characters Brown introduces such as Dutch’s best friend Wes Hamner, the school football coach and Mr. City Council who, with the help of the local druggist, William Ritt, is forcing Wes’s son, Scott a promising football star, to take steroids. Then the story is back to the couple trapped in the cabin. There are a few flashbacks but most of the story is told as it happens. The weather worsens. The tension builds. Dutch fears for his ex-wife’s life. He pushes himself and others to reach her. And there is sex, explicit sex, between main characters and side characters. The sex made me feel uncomfortable. I would look around with my heart pounding to see if anyone else in the room noticed what I was reading.
But Brown knows her business. She has written 58 New York Times Bestsellers. She started with romances and still includes the romantic elements in her romantic suspense novels. Sex, romance and suspense sell. Readers who like fast paced suspense with plot twists and aren’t embarrassed by explicit sex will enjoy Chill Factor and Brown’s 24 other romantic suspense novels.
Chill Factor by Sandra Brown
Published in 2005 by Simon Shuster, New York
389 pages
Set in the mountains of Cleary, North Carolina during a winter ice storm/blizzard. Storms -- fiction, Mountain life -- fiction, serial murders – fiction, Vacation homes – fiction, North Carolina – fiction, Romantic Suspense novels
Very Kirkus - lots of tone and affect.
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