Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen has found her niche writing medical thrillers. Although she loved Nancy Drew as a child and wanted to write books like those, she attended medical school and practiced medicine in Hawaii. Her Rizzoli and Isles series has been developed into a TNT television show and she continues to turn out quality crime novels.

Her latest best-seller of the Rizzoli and Isles series is a combination suspense thriller, medical crime shocker, and romance.

Medical Examiner, Maura Isles, heads west for a medical conference in the mountains of Wyoming with serious misgivings about her current romantic relationship with a Catholic priest. She meets up with a fellow M.E. she knew in college and agrees to accompany him, his teen-aged daughter, and another couple on a cross country skiing jaunt.

Soon, however, things begin to go terribly wrong. A heavy snowfall causes them to veer off the main road and become dangerously lost; eventually becoming stranded in a ravine. They manage to stagger through the deep snow where they find refuge in a lonely setting of abandoned cabins The place is eerily forbidding and Maura soon finds evidence of a possible assualt. It becomes evident that some religious cult had occupied the settlement, and Maura can only speculate on their whereabouts.

Meanwhile FBI friend Rizzoli becomes concerned about Maura and flies to Wyoming to determine what has transpired. The insuing search, and Maura's desperate attempt to stay alive while unknown adversaries doggedly track her through the wilderness, will keep you glued to your recliner.

This is an amazingly well-written novel, and I somehow know that if it were made into an equally well-produced movie it would have your heart racing. The characters are skillfully created and it is deviously difficult to figure out who is on the side of justice and who has their own dangerous agenda. I don't know what caliber doctor Tess Gerritsen was, but she is definetly a talented writer. On a scale of 1 to 10.I rate "Ice Cold" an 8.