Book review: Die cold by Graham Smith - Wrap up warm folks - you'll need to!

Available here

I'm a crime fiction reader and I LOVE JAKE BOULDER. There, it's out there - judge me if you will. So, my lovely damaged Jake is pushed almost to the end in this one. Battling the weather as well as the terrorists is only half the battle for Jake. He's also got his own internal demons to battle ... and believe me they are so much scarier for him than the terrorists inside the ski resort he's working at or the weather.







Blurb

Boulder is back.

Jake Boulder is working as a bartender, at an exclusive Vermont ski resort on New Year’s

Eve, when armed terrorists hold up the lodge and take all the customers and guests hostage. 

Trapped with the other hostages, Boulder watches in horror as the female terrorist leader disfigures a singer to make her point. He wants to fight back, but is unarmed and being held at gunpoint. 

Boulder finds a way to escape from the terrorists and searches for a way to raise the alarm. After he discovers the terrorists’ plan to leave no witnesses to their crime, he knows he has a race against time to save as many innocent people as he can…

But will Boulder be the reluctant hero and save the day?

Also available in the Jake Boulder Series:

Watching the Bodies

The Kindred Killers

Past Echoes

So, what really drew me into Die Cold? Well, it's that knowledge that Jake, despite all his flaws, is a good man and he'll do his utmost to save innocent people. He's like a modern day Batman without the car or the suit (although he'd probably have been quite grateful for a Batsuit in this one) More than that though it's the very human instincts that carry him forward. Smith artfully juxtaposes the ice cold  surroundings and the obstacles it throws up for Jake with the fire and heat of the fast paced, action-led, hurtling adrenalin rush that propels the  narrative forward at a rate of knots. 
Very different from the other Jake Boulder books this , I think, has been my favourite so far.  It pushes boundaries, tests human endurance and above all provides an optimism that melts the coldness that Smith so adeptly portrays throughout.