Winter Frost: A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery ~ Audio Book Blog Tour Review & Giveaway!

WINTER FROST 

A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery

(Book 2)

BY LAUREN CARR

Publisher: Acorn Book Services

Release date: January 28, 2019

Content Rating: PG-13

Book Description:

It all started with a chance encounter in the city with Blair, his late wife.

Chris Matheson and the Geezer Squad, working under the guise of a book club, dig into the events surrounding his late wife’s supposed death halfway around the globe. A state department employee shoots himself in the back three times. A CIA operative goes missing. A woman is targeted by an international assassin three years after being declared dead in a terrorist attack overseas. 

Nothing is as it seems. 

In his most personal cold case, Chris fights to uncover why the state department told him that Blair, the mother of his children, had been killed when she was alive. What had she uncovered that has made her a target? Who terrified her so much that she had gone into hiding and why are they now after him?

To read reviews, please visit Lauren Carr's page on iRead Book Tours.

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HALL WAYS REVIEW: Audio Book Review. Whoa! Winter Frost: A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery starts off with a bang – literally, as the first of many deaths happens in a book with a high body count and a lot of action.  For readers like me who are familiar with and fans of book one in the series, Ice, you’ll be delighted that the same endearing cast of characters returns in all its glory.  If you haven’t yet jumped on this series, get to it, but don’t be concerned about starting here. Each of the books stands alone, but I do feel like you get a leg-up by having read book one first.

“It was bad enough that his date with Helen had been ruined by him being forced to kill an international assassin threatening to kill the wife he had thought was dead.”

Yeah. That is how Winter Frost rolls. Don’t daze-out while you’re listening to this story or you may never find your way back. Author Lauren Carr has designed an incredibly complex series of plots and sub-plots that totally come together to provide a fabulous story – even if I was a bit lost some times. I feel like I might have done better reading this one with my eyes because part of the complexity lies in the cast of characters, and in this book, the groupings of them: there are a couple of good guy/gal groups and a couple of bad guy/gal groups, and there are a couple of secret organizations, and there are an abundance of people involved in each of them, so it’s hard to keep them straight when listening to the story. (I believe that in the print copies, Carr provides a list of the characters at the start of the book – that would be super helpful.)

“Helen didn’t know whether to be impressed or frightened by the 65-year-old librarian. Within two minutes of learning about the two unidentified men in the SUV, Doris had concocted a plan to capture them. She’d read it in a book, though she couldn’t remember the author or the title. She did recall that it had a red and black cover.”

Regardless of my confusion with the new characters, the familiar and favorite characters kept me grounded in the story. Doris, our main character’s sassy mother, kept me laughing and is so realistically written that I truly feel like she exists in the world. What a hoot! Additionally, the Geezer Squad “book club” is back and is the backbone of getting to the root of the mysteries and kicking arse and taking names in the process. Also returning to the spotlight is the fabulous retired police dog, Sterling, whose scenes are always spiked with a comic element.  

“Politics is like carbon monoxide. As soon as politics touches anything, it drains every ounce of life and sanity from it.”

Chilling chase scenes, multiple crises, explosions, death, destruction, and general mayhem are all placed within the context of some rotten political shenanigans where the name of the game is powerful people doing whatever it takes to stay at the top and having fixers to clean up the messes. With this angle, Carr hits pretty close to what’s in the headlines with Winter Frost.  With the exception of some odd, heavily religious moments that seemed to come out of nowhere, Winter Frost is solid and well written.

Readers will be slammed from side to side as the story takes its corners quickly and sharply. Just as you catch your breath, there’s a serious mic drop moment with only thirty minutes or so left in the eight plus hour audio, and then the loose ends are rapidly tied and issues resolved as the story pulls into park.  There’s no way I’ll miss reading the next book in this series. Hooked.

ABOUT THE NARRATION. Narrator Mike Alger returns and does another terrific job of voicing the massive cast of characters. There is a fair amount of internal monologue, and some effects have been added so listeners can easily distinguish it from regular dialogue. Alger’s pacing is good, and he does every voice, from sultry secret agent to geeky tech guy, with style.  I listened to the audio at 1.25x speed due to my typical audio impatience.

Thank you to iRead Book Tours and the author for providing me an audio book download in exchange for my honest opinion – the only kind I give. 

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Meet the Author: LAUREN CARR is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose Mysteries—over twenty titles across three fast-paced mystery series filled with twists and turns!

Now, Lauren has added one more hit series to her list with the Chris Matheson Cold Case Mysteries. Set in the quaint West Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, Ice introduces Chris Matheson, a retired FBI agent, who joins forces with other law enforcement retirees to heat up those cold cases that keep them up at night.

Book reviewers and readers alike rave about how Lauren Carr’s seamlessly crosses genres to include mystery, suspense, crime fiction, police procedurals, romance, and humor.

Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband, and three dogs on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.

Connect with the author: Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Instagram

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