Chill Factor: A Novel Mass Market Paperback – August 1, 2006

~Chill Factor~*set in the small town of Cleary, North Carolina, where magazine publisher Lilly Martin is packing up her things at the cabin she shared with her ex-husband, Dutch Burton. Now the police chief of Cleary, Dutch desperately wants another chance with Lilly. She refuses, and he leaves the cabin, warning her of an impending blizzard. On her way down from the mountains, she accidentally hits a man in the road. She manages to get the man, Ben Tierney, back to her cabin, where they decide to wait out the storm. But the more time she spends with Tierney, the more Lilly fears he might be the serial killer dubbed "Blue," who has been abducting women in Cleary for the past year. Despite her mounting concerns, Lilly can't help her growing attraction for the man. Back in town, Dutch is frantic when he learns Lilly is trapped up in the cabin with Tierney, whom the FBI also suspects might be Blue. Dutch's concern grows, and he mounts a desperate attempt to rescue his ex-wife. The suspense builds as Brown's novel chugs toward a gripping, surprising conclusion.** After Lilly has packed up all that she wants from the cabin that belonged to her and her ex-husband Dutch (Cleary, North Carolina police chief) Dutch wants a second chance with Lilly and she is finished as far as she's concerned the marriage is over. Being frustrated leaves Lilly in the cabin with a bad storm coming, Lilly falls asleep wakes a while later. checks the cabin one last time locks the door and starts down the mountain roads are icy while driving down the mountain road a man comes out of the woods on to the road right in her path Lilly hits the brakes the man jumps back, but the car fish tails and the man is hit, Lilly gets out to find Tierney.has hit his head on a rock and it's bleeding pretty bad,and her car hit a tree when lilly helps him back to the cabin, and she checks him out he has the symptoms of a concussion and his ribs are bruised*Before her suspicions about Ben arise, she manages to get a partial call to her ex-husband, who happens to be Cleary's chief of police, but the call is just enough to get Dutch Barton's dander up. Dutch has a lot of problems, between his wife divorcing him, being fired from the Atlanta PD, the parents of a missing girl showing up at the police station at all hours to pester him about progress on the case, and now Lilly is shacked up in the mountains with another man. To make matters worse, a couple of interfering FBI agents show up to take over his investigation, and they aren't showing him the respect he deserves. Dutch's best friend, Wes Hamer, is the high school football coach and on the city council. For his own reasons, he is just as anxious to reach the mountain cabin before anyone else, and they're all wrapped up in his football star son's relationship with one of the missing women. The whole quiet town of Cleary is a hotbed of secrets, between a school teacher and her secret lover, the police chief's problems, and Wes Hamer's infidelities, which all seem to be tied to the disappearances of the five women. While the tension heats to the boiling point in town, Lilly and Tierney have their own issues to deal with, between her asthma, his injuries, and the evidence she keeps finding that points to him as the killer, every time she's just about to trust him.I LOVED this Book! I Couldn't put it Down!!A REAL PAGE TURNER!!!!

The ink isn't quite dry on Lilly Martin's divorce papers when she and her ex-husband, Dutch Barton, part for the last time after selling their mountain cabin in Cleary, Virginia. Dutch keeps trying to win her back, but Lilly is through with him, and the emotional exhaustion brought on by their last meeting has her falling asleep when she should be heading back down the mountain before the weather gets bad. When she wakes up and takes off, she winds up hitting hiker Ben Tierney and crashing her car. The two of them limp back through the woods to Lilly's cabin to wait out the storm, where they both reminisce about the first time they met on a kayaking trip the summer before. Attraction had flared between them, but Lilly put Tierney off because she was still married. Just when Ben thinks he may have a second chance with Lilly, however, she stumbles upon his backpack, which is full of incriminating evidence tying Ben to the disappearances of five women in Cleary over the past two years. With cell phone service spotty at best and roads made completely impassable by a raging blizzard, Lilly is stuck with a man who just might be a serial killer.Before her suspicions about Ben arise, she manages to get a partial call to her ex-husband, who happens to be Cleary's chief of police, but the call is just enough to get Dutch Barton's dander up. Dutch has a lot of problems, between his wife divorcing him, being fired from the Atlanta PD, the parents of a missing girl showing up at the police station at all hours to pester him about progress on the case, and now Lilly is shacked up in the mountains with another man. To make matters worse, a couple of interfering FBI agents show up to take over his investigation, and they aren't showing him the respect he deserves. Dutch's best friend, Wes Hamer, is the high school football coach and on the city council. For his own reasons, he is just as anxious to reach the mountain cabin before anyone else, and they're all wrapped up in his football star son's relationship with one of the missing women. The whole quiet town of Cleary is a hotbed of secrets, between a school teacher and her secret lover, the police chief's problems, and Wes Hamer's infidelities, which all seem to be tied to the disappearances of the five women. While the tension heats to the boiling point in town, Lilly and Tierney have their own issues to deal with, between her asthma, his injuries, and the evidence she keeps finding that points to him as the killer, every time she's just about to trust him.Once again, Sandra Brown delivers a page-turning suspense story that bounces from character to character, creating more questions than answers as the story unfolds. Living in Minnesota, the only issue I had was with the woeful inadequacies at the cabin. Don't they have insulation in Virginia to prevent water pipes from freezing? Who keeps their woodshed so far from the cabin that it's such a production to collect firewood? From the moment the first snowflake flew, I had to wonder why nobody was using snowmobiles. That's just a no-brainer around here, and they are not at all difficult to drive, as implied in this story. They also do not have to keep to the roads, and when there is snow on the ground they can zip over all sorts of terrain, through the woods and otherwise. Those colloquial things aside, however, this was a quality suspense thriller that kept me guessing to the very end, and I give it a strong recommendation.