Book Review: The Cold Blue Blood

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

The Cold Blue Blood     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
David Handler
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Police Procedural   Cozy
Series: Berger & Mitry # 1
Dunne, Oct 2001, $23.95, 304 pp.

Though only thirty-two years old, New York City film critic and author Mitch Berger feels his life ended the day his beloved wife died from ovarian cancer. His editor Lacy Mickerson worries that Mitch rarely leaves his Greenwich Village home, passing time watching classic films. He even rejected a trip to Cannes for the festival. Because she cares, Lacy sends Mitch to Dorset on the Connecticut Gold Coast, allegedly to write an article, but more to get him out of his apartment.

Surprisingly, Mitch finds the town charming and even rents a home from Dolly Seymour on exclusive Big Sister as he sees this as an opportunity to start over again. However, his need for a new type of tranquillity is disturbed when he finds a corpse in his garden. Police Lieutenant Desiree Mitry of the State Major Crimes Squad leads the official investigation even as Mitch makes his own brand of inquiries. As they run into one another, Mitch and Desiree form an attraction, but he feels guilty and she hurts from the abandonment of her first spouse, making it obvious that once the case is solved the relationship is over or is it?

Renowned for his Hoag novels, David Handler begins a new series starring two attractive and complex individuals. A die hard New Yorker, Mitch remains in mourning until he arrives at Big Sister while Dolly is a beautiful Amazonian African-American who mistrusts males except if they are cats. Thrown together in an interesting police-procedural-amateur sleuth who-done-it, they form the basis for a wonderful opening novel.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner