Minotaur
Published February 18, 2025
Reviewed by Sharon Mensing
I love this Haven’s Rock series as well as the previous Rockton series from which this is a spin-off. I’ve read them all. Both series take place in the most remote parts of the Yukon, where they are hidden from the rest of the world’s observation. Rockton had social and economic problems that caused it to close down, with the new town of Haven’s Rock offering an equally remote location to fix those problems. Casey Duncan (aka Butler) is the town’s detective, while her husband, Eric Dalton, is the sheriff. In this third book of the Haven’s Rock series, Casey is pregnant with the birth imminent when a woman goes missing during a blizzard in white-out conditions.
At the start of this book, it felt as though it was going to be all about Casey’s final days of pregnancy and would not include as much action as usual for the series. About a quarter of the way in, though, that changed. Although the pregnancy continued to be a big part of the story, it certainly didn’t hold the action back. Another strong element of the plot was the powerful winter storm. In fact, when I had to set the book down (and believe me, I didn’t want to), I would be amazed that there wasn’t a storm raging outside. Much of the action is based around the cold, snow and wind brought in by the storm.
Casey and Eric are more complexly portrayed than usual in this book, as they struggle with handling the exigencies of an end-of-term pregnancy with a killer in their midst and a storm cutting off both communication and travel. Both are usually the strong, tough-as-nails type, but in Cold as Hell they must temper that with the needs of their immanent childbirthing. The storm and the killer it seems to protect also make them reflect upon the shortcoming of the policies they’ve put in place in Haven’s Rock even as they deal with the consequences of those flaws.
The ending kept me reading deep into the night, absolutely unable to set the book aside. Armstrong is among the best at making an impossibly implausible resolution feel possible in the moment. No spoilers here, but you’ll know what I mean when you read this.
This strong addition to the series has me wondering how Haven’s Rock will change in book #4.