Book review: Chill Factor by Sandra Brown

CHILL FACTOR

4 STARS

Cleary, North Carolina, is a sleepy mountain town -- the kind of place where criminal activity is usually limited to parking violations. Not so, lately. Four women have disappeared from Cleary over the past two years. And there's always a blue ribbon left near the spot where each of the women was last seen. There are no bodies, no other clues, and no suspicion as to who their abductor might be. And now, another woman has disappeared without a trace.

It is to this backdrop that Lilly Martin returns to close the sale of her mountain cabin, marking the end of her turbulent eight-year marriage to Dutch Burton, Cleary's chief of police. Dutch's reluctance to let her go isn't Lilly's only obstacle. As she's trying to outrun a snowstorm, her car skids on the icy road and strikes a man who emerges from the woods on foot. She recognizes the injured man as Ben Tierney, whom she'd met the previous summer. They're forced to wait out the storm in the cabin, but as the hours of their confinement mount, Lilly begins to wonder if the greatest danger to her safety isn't the blizzard outside, but the mysterious man right beside her.

Is Ben Tierney the feared abductor? Or is he who he claims to be...her rescuer from harm and from the tragedy that haunts her?
 
 
I am always game for one of Sandra Brown's books, they are generally a "no-brainer", knowing you'll get a good read no matter what. This was no exception. Sandra is a wizard at setting the stage in this thriller, making the reader grasp at any indication that Ben Tierney isn't a murderer. The sexual desire and tension between Tierney and Lilly can be cut with a butter knife, thick and daunting. You will struggle to piece together all the facts and decide for yourself the answers to the basic questions, Good or Evil? Guilty or not guilty?
 
The little town of Cleary is that of a soap opera, drama, teenage preganancy, gossip, betrayal and even may/december romances. Yet for how small this little town is, no one seemed to notice they had a murderer in thier midst. Sherriff Dutch Burton is determined to catch this killer and save his wif... ex-wife from the man she was stranded alone with. Dutch's jealious tempers rise, as does the heat between Tierbey and Lilly in the cabin high on Cleary moutain.