Cold Burn: A National Parks Thriller

by A. J. Landau, Jeff Ayers, Jon Land

Overview

Agent Michael Walker returns when multiple deaths at Glacier Bay National Park are just the first steps in a potential global disaster.

National Park Service investigator Michael Walker is battling smugglers stealing priceless artifacts when he’s dispatched to Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, where, in the first stage of a potential global disaster, a team of scientists has gone missing.

Meanwhile, in Florida’s Everglades National Park, FBI special investigator Gina Delgado traces the murder of an environmental science intern back to another U.S. Geological Survey team’s ongoing experiments that are decimating the fragile ecosystem. That is before she’s dispatched to the scene of a sunken U.S. nuclear submarine, the entire crew of which has inexplicably been killed.

The connection between these disparate investigations lies in a deadly prehistoric organism, frozen for thousands of years in the ice until global warming brings it back to life in what could mean the death of all life on Earth. An organism that a rogue billionaire sees as the ultimate fuel source and a Russian strongman views as the ultimate weapon that can shift the global balance of power forever. Against that backdrop, Walker and Delgado find themselves desperately doing battle across multiple fronts against an ancient, unstoppable enemy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250877369
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/29/2025
Series:	A National Parks Thriller , #2
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

A. J. LANDAU is the pseudonym for two authors, Jon Land, the award-winning, bestselling author and co-author of more than fifty books, and Jeff Ayers, reviewer, former-librarian, and author. Land lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and Jeff Ayers lives in Seattle, Washington.

Jeff Ayers is the author of several books, including Voyages of Imagination. He has been a book reviewer for the Associated Press, Library Journal, and Booklist, and currently reviews for Criminal Element and firstCLUE. He is a retired public librarian and lives near Seattle, Washington.

Jon Land is the USA Today bestselling author of more than fifty books, over ten of which feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. The critically acclaimed series has won more than a dozen awards, including the 2019 International Book Award for Best Thriller for Strong as Steel. He is also the author of Chasing the Dragon, a detailed account of the War on Drugs written with one of the most celebrated DEA agents of all time. A graduate of Brown University, Land lives in Providence, Rhode Island and received the 2019 Rhode Island Authors Legacy Award for his lifetime of literary achievements.

Editorial Reviews

"A white-knuckled thrill ride driven by a bullet train of a plot, Cold Burn is hands down the best thriller of the year." —L.A. Tribune

“From the very first page, Cold Burn accelerates like a Cybertruck and never slows down. A wild and entertaining ride!” —C.J. Box, #1 NYT Bestselling Author of Three-Inch Teeth

“AJ Landau knows how to keep the pages turning. A gripping read.” —Harlan Coben, #1 NYT Bestselling Author of Think Twice

"Brace yourself! Landau is back...and it's even more breakneck than the last!" —firstCLUE

"Action-packed...a high concept worthy of James Bond." —Kirkus Reviews

"An explosive, taut, unputdownable, nail-biting reading experience." —Press-Republican

"Cold Burn is both a fun and frightening ride. If you enjoy Preston & Child, James Rollins, Brad Thor, and a touch of Brad Meltzer, you absolutely will devour this book. The next National Parks thriller cannot come fast enough!" —BookReporter

"Action-packed, page-turning and yet sophisticated... It grabs you by the throat right from the very beginning." —BookTrib

"Immersing us in each of the settings with descriptive and evocative language." —Crime Fiction Review

"An electrifying sequel... not to be missed." —Open Book Society

"A clever whodunit/whydunit that will keep you guessing right to the end." —Globe and Mail

"An exciting, magnetic and original tale." —Book Review Magazine

From the Publisher

2025-03-22
Fresh from their debut inLeave No Trace (2024), National Park Service investigator Michael Walker and FBI agent Gina Delgado team up again, sort of, to solve an oversized mystery that threatens all life on Earth.

The case begins as several cases. A U.S. Geological Survey team gone missing in an avalanche disappears from the cave where they’ve taken refuge. A submarine on a training mission, accidentally struck by a long-dormant explosive device a salvage ship is pulling up, sinks to the bottom of Alaska’s Icy Strait, where its entire crew perishes. Walker, looking into a rash of stolen Tlingit artifacts, watches his leading suspects get shot to death by an assassin he must kill in turn, destroying his best lead. Delgado is assigned to identify a man who’s been seriously worked over by local fauna before his body is recovered from the Everglades. It takes a long time to work out the connection among all of these misfortunes, and even when the two authors writing as Landau reveal that both the USGS team and the submarine crew have frozen to death in relatively temperate settings, along with vast quantities of native fish who should be immune to the cold, the answer raises still more questions. How could such a thing happen? Who could have made it happen, and why? And what can be done about it before the rash of freezings goes worldwide? Following separate trails that readers will see converging long before the investigators do, Walker and Delgado eventually band together with the Tlingit community and each other to wrestle with the anticlimactic human scoundrels behind Operation Cold Burn.

The action-packed unraveling may be routine, but not the calamitous threat, which is a high concept worthy of James Bond.

Kirkus Reviews