A Cold Dark Place

January 14, 2008
When a powerful twister hits the little town of Cherrystone, Wash., former Seattle homicide detective Emily Kenyon checks in on the Martins: she finds their home demolished by the storm, and three of the four family members murdered by a demented killer. Suspiciously missing from the carnage is older son Nick, but is he a witness or the murderer? And Emily soon finds that her teenage daughter, Jenna, has run off with Nick in order to help him clear his name. What Emily doesn't know is that the Martin family deaths are connected to a series of murders going back two decades, and are linked to a case from her own past whose tragic outcome ultimately drove her out of the Seattle police force. Olsen does a nice job balancing past and present plots and subplots in this intricately layered story, keeping the tension taut and pages turning.