"Chilling Romantic Suspense"

Brown delivers an eerie tale of a serial killer in this, her latest suspense thriller. The setting is the wintry mountains of North Carolina, near the small town of Cleary, where five women have disappeared without a trace over the past two years. With her divorce from local police chief Dutch Burton, Lilly Martin is cleaning out their mountain cabin retreat before she travels back to her Atlanta home. But her car careens off the road on her way down the mountain, and she hits Ben Tierney, a travel writer whom she met the previous summer. The two are stranded in Lilly's cabin, as Tierney recovers from his injuries, and romantic tension heats up between them.

As police and the FBI continue to search for the abductor, nicknamed Blue for the blue ribbons he leaves when he takes his victims, the storm rages on. Certain clues leave Lily wondering if the man she is sharing her cabin with might be her greatest fear. Could Tierney be Blue?

Brown's small town cast of characters comes alive in quiet Cleary, North Carolina. From the local high school football coach to the mild mannered pharmacist, it is clear that many of Cleary's residents have dark secrets, and one of them just might be the notorious Blue. The mystery is expertly crafted; leading readers on a white knuckled ride complete with plenty of red herrings. The conclusion is tumultuous and explosive, the perfect finale to this bone chilling thriller.

Reviewed by Sheri Melnick
Posted August 22, 2005

Summary

Suspense abounds in this gripping new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown, in which a successful magazine editor is trapped in her remote cabin with a man believed to be a serial killer.

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?

The compelling characters, sexual tension, and stunning plot twists in Sandra Brown's Chill Factor combine to create a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the very end.