January 24, 2013 / Leslie

Review: Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman

JKS Communications, JKS Tour, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Cover of Snow
by Jenny Milchman

Genre: Suspense/Mystery
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publish Date: January 15, 2013
Format: Hardcover | 336 pages

Nora Hamilton wakes from a foggy sleep and immediately senses something is wrong. She has overslept for an appointment with a client; why didn’t her husband wake her up? She soon discovers the gruesome answer when she finds him hanging from a light fixture, an apparent suicide.

There was no note and Nora does not believe her husband, a member of the local police force, would kill himself. As far as she knows he did not have a reason. But did Nora really know her husband? Her mother-in-law, an evil, unlikable woman, is unwilling to answer questions and doesn’t even want Nora in her house. Brendan’s coworkers and friends on the police force are evasive and avoid direct answers.

The more Nora investigates, the bigger the mystery becomes. She finds out that Brendan had a brother that died in a drowning accident on a lake, and he never told her about it. While Nora does seem a bit clueless at times — shouldn’t she know more about her husband and his family? — she is now determined to get answers.

Set in the winter in a small town in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, the atmosphere is often moody and bleak. There is an ever-present cold chill and the snow itself becomes a character. Adding to the tension, the locals of this small town are secretive and clannish and outsiders such as Nora are viewed with suspicion.

Most of the book is narrated by Nora and written in the first person. Interspersed throughout the book are a series of chapters written in the third person from the perspective of several key characters in the story. This technique gives the reader insight into their motives and actions; things Nora didn’t know and couldn’t tell us.

The action is slow in the early chapters as Nora begins to piece together the puzzle of her husband’s death. The pace picks up dramatically after the first third of the novel and the story becomes more compelling, rewarding the reader with a suspenseful thriller.

A nice debut from a promising new author.

About the Author

Jenny Milchman is a suspense writer from New Jersey. Her debut novel, COVER OF SNOW, is forthcoming from Ballantine in January 2013 and is available for pre-order now. Her short story The Closet will be published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in November 2012. Another short story, The Very Old Man, has been an Amazon bestseller, and the short work Black Sun on Tupper Lake will appear in the anthology ADIRONDACK MYSTERIES II.

Jenny is the Chair of the International Thriller Writers Debut Authors Program, and the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, which was celebrated in all 50 states and four foreign countries in 2011.

Jenny hosts the Made It Moments forum on her blog, which has featured more than 200 international bestsellers, Edgar winners, and independent authors, co-hosts the literary series Writing Matters, which attracts guests coast-to-coast and has received national media attention, and teaches writing and publishing for New York Writers Workshop and Arts By The People.