Cold as Hell (Haven's Rock, #3) by Kelley Armstrong 
Series: Haven's Rock #3
Published by Minotaur Books on February 18, 2025
Genres: Crime Drama
Pages: 352
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong returns to Haven’s Rock in Cold as Hell as Casey Butler hunts down a dangerous killer during a deadly blizzard.
Haven’s Rock is a sanctuary town hidden deep in the Yukon for those who need to disappear from the regular world. Detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, are starting a family now that they’ve settled into their life here. As Casey nears the end of her pregnancy, she lets nothing, including her worried husband, stop her from investigating what happens in the forbidden forest outside the town of Haven’s Rock.
When one of the town's residents is drugged and wanders too close to the edge of town, she’s dragged into the woods kicking and screaming. She’s saved in the nick of time, but the women of the town are alarmed. Casey and Eric investigate the assault just as a snowstorm hits Haven’s Rock, covering the forest. It’s there they find a frozen body, naked in the snow. With mixed accounts of the woman's last movements, the two begin to question who they can trust—and who they can't—in their seemingly safe haven.
The murder mystery held my attention but overall, I don’t think I will be coming back for more.
Detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, do their best to keep the citizens of their tiny hidden oasis safe, even from each other. Most of the citizens of Haven’s Rock are in hiding for one reason or another, some from abusive spouses, some like Casey are hiding from a mob hit. When it looks like someone tried to drug and assault one of their residents, the whole town is on high alert but even high alerts can’t keep everyone safe when a white-out blizzard hits the town.
One of the woman is found out in the snow, not more that 500 yards from the town, naked. With no evidence of assault, they might have chalked it up to an accidental freezing and the loss of clothing due to “paradoxical undressing” where the body feels a burst of heat while freezing to death. The problem is that the body defrosts they catch the slight ligature marks which are popping up on the arms and legs. Did someone strip her and stake her to the ground? More horrifying, did they sit there and watch while she died?
Casey is about the give birth and she and Eric trying to get down to a major hospital but how can they leave with someone that dangerous out in their woods, or worse, someone that dangerous hiding in their midst.
THOUGHTS:
This is the third book of the Haven’s Rock series, spinoff of the Rockton series. Both series take place in an off the-grid-town in the Canadian Yukon where people are hiding for one reason or another. This is an interesting premise even though I was reading about the frozen Yukon tundra while it snowed outside my own window and made me feel even colder and more miserable.
This was also a very closed-room mystery since there are only about 70 people in the town, and we only focused on a handful of the closer acquaintances and friends to Casey and Eric. I started highlighting names and makes notes of questionable answers they gave. I was definitely invested in the who’s and why’s of what was happening, and one of my notes was on point. Ha!
There were also some interesting secondary characters in the story which I won’t discuss as to not give away any of the suspects but I did enjoy meeting most of them.
It was a good premise with good characters and an engaging mystery so why am I not more invested in more Haven’s Rock? There was a lot of discussion of the original Town (series) Rockton and the corruption involved in the ultimate failure of that Town. They are supposedly more scrutinizing with Haven’s Rock but as this is the third story, they still can’t keep the people there safe. I don’t know if it a feeling of how can we have more issues with a tiny town of 70 people who are all hiding from the world themselves or that I had a hard time accepting this weird modern Little House on the Prairie (in a snowstorm) lifestyle. I have a hard enough time with small town novels as there is nothing small town about where I live. I barely know my neighbors, let alone the business of everyone in town. How do 70 people trust each other when you don’t know the details but you do know there is something off about everyone in Town. I would be locking and barring my door every night, not from the bears or dangers lurking in the woods but from those questionable neighbors.
I might have to wait and see what the next story is about but if anyone wants to convince me to keep up with this series, I am willing to listen.
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