Cold Kill

by David Lawrence

Overview

"Fans of the PBS series Prime Suspect or of hot Scottish writer Ian Rankin shouldn't wait to check out this mystery...[it] will surely be one of the best mysteries of the summer, probably of the year."
- Rocky Mountain News on The Dead Sit Round in a Ring
Cold Kill, David Lawrence's third book in the highly acclaimed Detective Stella Mooney series, finds the memorable Stella at a crime scene in a wintry London park.
The brutalized corpse of a young woman has just been discovered. When Robert Kimber walks into a Notting Hill police station and confesses to the murder, it's an open-and-shut case--just what the police want this close to Christmas. But Stella has her doubts. And if their suspect didn't commit the murder, who did? Someone without a conscience. Someone who will tap into Kimber's disturbed mind. Someone who needs an apprentice for the dark business he has planned....

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466829824
Publisher:	Minotaur Books
Publication date:	04/16/2025
Series:	Detective Stella Mooney Novels , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	445
File size:	465 KB

About the Author

David Lawrence, in addition to being a talented novelist, is also an acclaimed poet and highly successful scriptwriter. Cold Kill is his third novel in the Detective Stella Mooney series--his previous titles, The Dead Sit Round in a Ring and Nothing Like the Night, have received widespread rave reviews. The author lives in southwest London and is hard at work on the next book in the series, which Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Minotaur will publish next year.

Editorial Reviews

Hundreds of quick cuts from multiple perspectives present a complex serial-killer case that threatens the personal life of a police detective, and vice versa. The body of a young woman named Valerie Blake, found in London's Holland Park, shows signs of ritual abuse as well as sexual assault. The investigating team, headed by Detective Sergeant Stella Mooney (The Dead Sit Round in a Ring, 2004, etc.), soon links the case to a handful of recent murders. The likeliest suspect is a tightly wound voyeur named Robert Kimber. Despite his obliging confession, Stella's instinct tells her that he's not the perp. Meanwhile, the far more dangerous Leon Bloss contacts Kimber and becomes his homicidal mentor. With a rising death toll, they establish a new pattern that baffles Stella and her police colleagues. Paralleling the challenges in the case are problems in Stella's personal life. Having finally left dull, friendly George and suspended her therapy sessions with shrink Anne Beaumont, who works as a profiler on the case, Stella's blissfully shacked up with equally hard-bitten journalist Delaney. But Delaney's pursuit of Kimber triggers violent arguments and ultimately creates a rift in their relationship. When Stella turns to DC Maxine Hewitt and her lesbian lover for temporary digs, all three become unwitting targets of the Bloss/Kimber alliance. More woolgathering than Stella's first two cases, but Lawrence's prose remains riveting, and the regulars grow steadily more complex.

Kirkus Reviews