Cold Island

Buy the Book:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Book Shop
Audible
Published by: Thomas & Mercer Publication
Release Date: September 1, 2025
Pages: 239
ISBN13: 978-1662530388

 
Synopsis

When the remains of a young murder victim on Nantucket Island are discovered after thirty-five years, a detective begins to unearth the dark secrets of a community gone silent.

Massachusetts State Police detective Tommy Kelly is called to Nantucket Island, where a boy’s skeletal remains have been discovered at a construction site―interred for thirty-five years. The crime is especially gutting for Tommy, the father of two boys. It’s also the beginning of a grim mystery. Because no child during that period was even reported missing.

Tommy is partnered with Nantucket PD’s best detective, Jo Harris, who first chafes at the idea of a mainlander encroaching on her territory. And their work together is only raising more troubling questions. Then a possible link is found to the decades-old case of a serial killer―a vigilantly hidden part of the past that this tight-knit community would prefer to forget and never speak of again.

The secrets in their silence are so shocking they soon pull Tommy into a very dark place. Suddenly, offseason on Nantucket has never felt so cold, so isolating, or so dangerous.

Add on Goodreads

Praise

"In this promising... launch, Colt (the Andy Roark mysteries) puts his New England upbringing and experience as a police officer to good use. Beleaguered Massachusetts state trooper Tommy Kelly, who’s been clashing with his boss while his marriage crumbles, has just been assigned a gruesome investigation on Nantucket. Recent construction has unearthed the 35-year-old remains of abused child Nick Steuben, and Kelly is tasked with figuring out how he died, despite his aversion to such cases as the father of two boys. To make things more difficult, Kelly is paired with Nantucket police detective Jo Harris, who’s frosty to off-islanders on her best days. As the pair pore over missing persons files and get the cold shoulder from the island’s tight-lipped residents, Colt mixes in chapters set in 1981, which follow a series of boys who vanished the same year as Nick. ... [Colt] enlivens his... setup with convincing local color and a surprisingly complex psychological portrait of his lead... police procedural fans [will]  forward to the follow-up."
—Publishers Weekly