Book Review: Tami Hoag's Cold Cold Heart

I love a good psychological thriller and after reading Tami Hoag’s Cold Cold Heart, I was hooked. Cold Cold Heart picks up where The 9th Girl (a Kovac/Liska detective novel) left off. Hoag’s previous book followed Detectives Kovac and Liska as they hunted serial killer Doc Holiday. Unlike the previous detective novels, however, Cold Cold Heart follows the physical and psychological recovery and struggles of Dana Nolan. Nolan survived her ordeal with Doc Holiday, killing him and ending his reign of terror. And while its true that Doc Holiday won’t have any future victims, his torment of Dana Nolan continues. Dana’s lost large portions of her memory, including those of her torture, though she suffers from severe PTSD and physical scars that serve as a daily reminder of her ordeal. Unable to return to the life she’d created for herself, she must return to her childhood home and try to find a way to begin again.

But Dana’s homecoming is anything but peaceful. The mysterious disappearance of her high school friend becomes the center of her new world and leads into dangerous territory. Unable to rely on her memory, Dana tries to piece together the circumstances of her friends’ final days, a task that will put her sanity and even her life in grave danger.

After finishing this book, I read a number of others that Hoag had written, most of which were more traditional crime/detective novels than Cold Cold Heart. I love her characters and I love that she writes in series, allowing me to revisit my favorite characters in various stages of their lives. In particular, her Kovac/Liska novels are full of murder, intrigue and lots of great forensic particulars which I find irresistible. 

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