Cold Case Squad

Cold Case Squad is one of Buchanan's later novels. The "Queen of Crime" writes a suspense novel to feature a special homicide unit that breathes new life into old cases. The prose centers around a man and woman shot dead at a Miami strip club. A few hours later, an explosion in a garage next door to a child's birthday party has left a father of three burned to death. Naturally, at the time, the murder goes unsolved and the fire is chalked up to an accident. Twelve years later, the files are re-activated by detective Sargeant, Craig Burch, who's having marital problems of his own at the time, along with Detective Sam Stone, a guy with a mysterious past, and Detective Pete Nazario, who'd been air-lifted out of Cuba during "Operation Pedro Pan" in the 1960s. And, of course, Lieutenant, K.C. Riley, for whom one case will never grow old. This book is a page-turner that has a great plot with great characters. Don't miss it.

I enjoyed this book a lot, although I'm not sure why she stopped writing the Britt Montero series -- it seems her next book is also about the Cold Case Squad. The only problem I had with the book was the shifting points of view -- you'd be in Riley's POV, then in the next sentence you're in Stone's POV. Sometimes Burch is in the third person, sometimes he's in the first person. It made the story a bit hard to follow at times. Still an excellent read from one of the best.

With shades of the 87th Precinct, the Cold Case Squad has a wonderful cast of characters with diverse pasts and lives yet working well together as a team. There is excellent dialogue, humor and descriptions of Miami, but balanced with interesting procedure and good suspense. While it helps to have read "The Ice Maiden," it's not completely necessary as this is a wonderful book on it's own and I hope to see a lot more of the Cold Case Squad.

Buchanan's book is a quick read, but not a shallow one. The characters are all interesting and the mysteries (yes, plural) are interesting. There are no absurd scenes where the killer explains it all...just good dectective work. At times she seems a bit like other Miami authors with bizarre car chases or odd family histories, but overall the book works. I have not read the Britt Montero mysteries, but perhaps these are not entirely new characters to those fans. However, as a stand alone, this is a good solid mystery.

With the advent of computer databases, the internet, DNA testing and other advances in technology and science, crimes that couldn't be solved a decade ago might be resolved today. In Miami, the COLD CASE SQUAD consists of only four people but they are working on two cases using new investigative techniques and although they haven't solved them they have more information that could lead to identifying the killers.The first case involves Charles Terrell who was killed when he was working on his car when it exploded, burning him to a crisp. The coroner concluded that an accident occurred but twelve years later, his ex-wife asks them to reopen the case . She believes he was murdered because he was so fussy and meticulous, he would never work with faulty tools. Also Detective Stone discovers through the internet and databases unavailable at the time of the Terrell death that a serial killer was murdering female senior citizens. Although both cases seem impossible to solve the team is confident that they will find the killers.COLD CASE SQUAD is an action-filled exciting police procedural that starts off at light speed and only gets faster as the story progresses. As comic relief one of the detective's wives, furious with her husband, plays practical jokes on him that relieves the tension when it threatens to explode. Edna Buchanan gives readers an insider's look at a group of men and women dedicated to finding killers no matter how long they have gotten away with murder.Harriet Klausner