C.G.EBERLE

Lissa Redmond is originally form the small, industrial neighborhood of Woodlawn, NY, just south of Buffalo, NY, and sandwiched in-between  the Ford Stamping Plant & the Bethlehem Steel  Plant in neighboring Lackawanna, NY. When studying at the University of Buffalo, Lissa took & passed the exams to become a Buffalo Police Officer, where she met her future father-in-law, a superior officer, who asked her to go out undercover on the prostitution sting busts as a hooker. In time Lissa passed the detectives' test and worked her way up to the S.O.S. Unit, (Sex Offense Squad), then transferred to the Cold Case Unit, where she helped make history.

 

On January 15th, 2007, Lissa & the task force she was assigned too, arrested  Altemio Sanchez, a.k.a. The Bikepath Killer/Rapist.  Sanchez is known to have murdered and/or raped at least three women, and raped between 9-15 girls and women in and around Buffalo, New York, during a 25-year span from 1981–2006. On May 16, 2007, Sanchez pleaded guilty to the murders of Linda Yalem, Majane Mazur and Joan Diver.

 

In 2007 Lissa & her unit cleared Anthony Capozzi  and he was freed from state prison after serving 22 years for two rapes with a similar modus operandi. After the arrest of Sanchez, investigators realized that the crimes were similar and took place in the same area, and that Sanchez and Capozzi closely resembled each other at the time the crimes were committed.

After a twenty-two year career, Lissa retired to handle her husband, a fellow detective, their two kids & an ungrateful cat. And begin a writing career.

 

A Cold Day In Hell  is Lissa's first novel in her Cold Case series, and I admit fully I had a very hard time putting it down.

​Right from the beginning it's a compelling story, that draws in the reader and I admit I've become emtionally invested in Cold Case Detective & P.I. Lauren Riley, and I look foward to the third book in the series, coming this September.

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In Cold Day,  Riley is hired by her nemesis, defense attorney Frank Violanti, to help clear his client of murder. At first Lauren refuses, wanting nothing to do with the media circus surrounding the case―until she meets the eighteen-year-old suspect. To keep her client out of prison, Lauren must unravel the conflicting evidence and changing stories to get at the buried facts. But the more she digs, the more she discovers that nothing is what it first appears to be. As Lauren puts her career and life in danger, doubt lurks on every corner . . . and so does her stalker.

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Like I said I had a hard time putting this down, but I think in part it is because Cold Day is set in my hometown of Buffalo, NY, so reading about place I know, or how the lead protagionist & her partner grew up in my neighborhood of South Buffalo adds to fun for me. If the story say was set in New York City I doubt I'd have the same passion.

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Although Cold Day isn't a traditional "murder-mystery" and at times it falls more into a court-room drama at times, like a Perry Mason  mystery by Earle Stanley-Gardner, there's enough of both

sub-genres to satisfy fans of both styles.

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Lissa's  time with the B.P.D. is a benefit to her novels, in that her experiences, her knowledge, everything that made her the police officer she was, adds to her voice of creditability that can't be faked.

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Both A Cold Day In Hell and the follow up novel The Murder Book give readers a sense of gritty realism of what Buffalo Homicide / Cold Case detectives deal with, and Lissa's compelling writing voice & storytelling make me want more, and I look forward to September's release of A Means Ton An End.  I just hope this won't be the last we'll see of Lauren Riley.