Full Cold Moon

March 2, 2020
In Redmond’s workmanlike fourth police procedural featuring Det. Lauren Riley of the Buffalo (N.Y.) PD (after 2019’s A Means to an End), Lauren, on temporary leave from the cold case unit, looks into the murder of Gunnar Jonsson, a young Icelandic man found bludgeoned to death in an alley near his hotel. Due to the victim’s nationality, the FBI steps in and provides Lauren with a new partner, special agent Matthew Lawton. Lauren discovers that Gunnar came to Buffalo to meet his multimillionaire father, John Hudson, whose identity he recently discovered by taking a DNA test. Mr. Hudson was overjoyed at meeting Gunnar, but his other two children weren’t. Just as Lauren identifies a local suspect, the Icelandic authorities request that she and Matthew come to Reykjavík to interview Gunnar’s employer. Once in Iceland, Lauren starts to develop theories, as well as potential suspects (of which there are only two), and then lets them drop while she sees the sights of Reykjavík. Armchair travelers will have fun, but those expecting more than a cursory investigation will be disappointed. Agent: Bob Mecoy, Creative Book Services.

March 1, 2020
A Buffalo cop adds yet another bizarre case to her string of bad-luck investigations. Police detective Lauren Riley's badly injured partner, Shane Reese (The Murder Book, 2019, etc.), is recovering in Lauren's home while she's transferred from working cold cases to Homicide till he returns. Lauren's stuck working with a detective soon to retire in what looks to become the tricky case of Gunnar Jonsson, from Reykjavik, found beaten to death with a brick near his upscale hotel. Although Buffalo has its share of murders, few of the victims are foreign citizens, so the FBI quickly becomes involved. A search of Jonsson's room reveals DNA test results that explain his reason for visiting Buffalo: his discovery of the father he never knew. The product of a one-night stand, Gunnar has a half brother in Iceland and two newly discovered American half siblings, Brooklyn and Ryan, whose seriously ill father, John Hudson, had recently won a multimillion-dollar settlement that gives all his relatives a very good motive for murder. Lauren's FBI partner, Special Agent Matthew Lawton, a computer expert with no real crime-solving experience, pitches in, and they turn up a new lead when the hotel's daytime desk manager reveals that Gunnar was sharing a room with a Mr. Steinarsson, whom she assumed was his husband and who checked out the day of Gunnar's murder. Pressed by the Icelandic government and the wealthy Mr. Hudson, the police and FBI send Lauren and Matt to Iceland looking for more clues while their colleagues keep after Brooklyn, a drug addict, and Ryan and his wife, who still seem like the best bet. In Iceland they partner with Berg Arnason as they seek out Steinarsson, a wealthy, well-connected businessman so determined to evade them that they begin to wonder what he's hiding. A prime character-driven procedural with the added allure of Iceland.

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Starred review from April 1, 2020

Buffalo police detective Lauren Riley is temporarily working homicide while her partner on the cold case squad is laid up with a work-related injury. Her shift should have been over when she catches a new case. Gunnar Jonsson, a visitor from Iceland, was brutally killed just steps from his hotel. Lauren fights for this case, one that reminds her of an earlier unsolved one that took place under a full cold moon. Was Gunnar killed because a DNA test led him to the States and a father he never knew? Before she has time to delve into the specifics, the top brass send her and an FBI agent to Iceland to investigate an influential businessman who was in the United States at the time. The trip throws them into a culture and case in which they're dependent on their Icelandic police connection. The investigation turns violent when a hit-and-run driver targets the trio. There are surprises at every step of this careful police procedural. VERDICT Redmond brings her 20 years experience as a cold-case homicide detective to this follow-up to A Means to an End. Fans of police procedurals will want to read all in the series after this compelling, twisted story. [See Prepub Alert, 10/21/19.]--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2020
The killing of Gunnar Jonsson evokes bad memories for Buffalo homicide detective Lauren Riley and comes to have international implications. Jonsson had traveled from his native Iceland to see his biological father, John Hudson, for the first time; after the meeting, Jonsson was bludgeoned to death near his hotel on the night of a "full cold moon," which occurs every December. Riley is reminded of an unsolved cold case: the disappearance of a 12-year-old boy in 1978 on the night of another full cold moon. She's haunted, too, by the brutality of Jonsson's murder, as she investigates Hudson's two other children for possible financial motive, then learns that Jonsson's boss had come with him to the U.S. but soon vanished. Riley and her cohort, FBI Special Agent Matt Lawton, are sent to Reykjavik to pursue the case as it twists and turns. The fourth entry in the Cold Case Investigation series by retired homicide detective Redmond is on the mark as a police procedural, humanized by Riley's enigmatic relationship with former partner Shane Reese, and enhanced by its Icelandic setting.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)