Author Sandra Brown takes a departure from her usual romance novels to explore mystery and suspense in Chill Factor. Lilly Martin and Dutch Burton are calling their marriage quits after being unable to survive the death of their three-year-old daughter. As the divorce becomes finalized, the last thing the estranged couple needs to do is close up their summer vacation cabin in North Carolina’s wintry mountains. Dutch is the chief of police in nearby small town Cleary while Lilly works as a magazine editor in Atlanta.
As Lily tries to return to her home after selling Dutch and her’s former cabin, she gets caught up in a blizzard, loses control of her car, and ends up hitting handsome, travel writer Ben Tierney, whom she had met and flirted with last summer on a kayaking trip. With no other choice, she brings the injured Ben back to her cabin in order to wait out the storm and things heat up between them. Meanwhile back in Cleary, Dutch receives a call from the FBI that Ben Tierney might just be the serial killer responsible for the disappearance of five girls in the area over the past two years. Learning that Lilly is snowed in with the man that may possibly be a serial killer, the race is on for Dutch to save his ex-wife (and potentially stop a budding romance between her and Ben) and unravel the mystery surrounding Cleary, N.C. and its seemingly innocent residents who hold deeper, darker secrets.
Read a review of Chill Fact here.