Cold as hell

In Armstrong's third "Haven's Rock" book (following The Boy Who Cried Bear), it's winter, and Detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, are expecting their first child in a few weeks. In their off-the-grid sanctuary town, deep in the Yukon forest, problems have surfaced once again. One night, a woman resident is drugged and dragged into the forest but fortunately escapes unharmed. As (bad) luck would have it, a severe snowstorm hits Haven's Rock just as Casey and Eric begin their investigation. When another woman disappears during the snowstorm and is later found frozen to death, it is assumed she died from hypothermia. But as they try to piece together her last movements, clues point to a different cause of death. After a third woman is attacked and left for dead in the forest, Casey and Eric have to unmask an imposter to keep their community from unraveling. VERDICT The wilderness surrounding Haven's Rock is itself a major character in the book, and Casey's approaching due date adds urgency to the plotline. For fans of strong women protagonists and Armstrong's Rockton series, of which "Haven's Rock" is a spin-off.--Jean King

Murder continues to threaten to reduce the population of the Yukon settlement of Haven's Rock even below the 67 adult inhabitants who've been invited there to overcome their criminal pasts and create a better world. The third installment in the franchise begins when Kendra, a social worker and plumber whose skills in both areas are highly valued, is drugged while having two drinks at the Roc, the town's one restaurant, and followed by someone who attacks her in the snowy woods. Miraculously escaping, she's in no shape to identify her assailant. Still less so is Lynn Williams, a general store clerk whose previous experience working with sexual assault cases provides no protection against this one, and she goes missing in the middle of a blizzard. Even though her bickering husband, Grant, tells Sheriff Eric Dalton and Casey Butler--his detective, wife, and co-founder of Haven's Rock--that Lynn must have spent the night in bed with one of the neighbors, her body is found naked in the woods, the evidence indicating that her sadistic killer forced her to strip, staked her out on the frozen lake, and then sat down and watched her freeze to death. Since Casey herself is heavily pregnant, one of the locals most acutely threatened by the case is the child she's carrying. She can only hope that the baby doesn't decide to come into the world at the height of that blizzard, or in the middle of Casey and Dalton's climactic pursuit of the killer, or while the killer is capturing Casey and informing her exactly how she's going to die. So much for the detective's assurance that "coming to Haven's Rock makes people much safer." What would her baby say? Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.