Cold Burn by A.J. Landau
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Cold Burn is the 2nd-book in the National Parks Thriller series by A.J. Landau, which is actually a pseudonym for the writing duo of Jon Land and Jeff Ayers.
I didn’t read the 1st-book in the series, Leave No Trace, but as with many Adult Mystery series, they can be read in any order. I certainly didn’t feel lost jumping into this one as I did without that background of book 1.
This book includes scenes at Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, as well as Florida’s Everglades National Park. The thing connecting the two, a deadly prehistoric microbe that not only killed off the wooly mammoth, but more recently, a USGS survey team that kicks our action off.
With powerful people battling for the lethal microbe, to use for their own gain, it’s up to NPS Special Agent Michael Walker and FBI Special Investigator Gina Delgado to exterminate the threat the microbe poses to the world.
In the beginning, Cold Burn felt refreshing. I don’t tend to pick up a lot of Action Thrillers, but unfortunately it was unable to ever fully capture my attention.
There are a lot of moving parts to this story. I liked how we were getting action in both Alaska and Florida. Unfortunately, because there was so much going on, and because I wasn’t fully hooked in, I feel like I wasn’t paying close enough attention to grasp all of the connections.
I can appreciate that this is a good book, particularly for Readers who love an intense Action Thriller with political intrigue and shady dealings. I just wasn’t that person at the time that I read this.
I might still read the 1st-book in the series, because it was alluded to a few times in this story, and the case they were investigating in that one did sound very interesting. Also, I have recently seen a 3rd-book announced, which is set at Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park that sounds like it could be a good one too.
Needless to say, even though this one didn’t blow me out of the water, I still enjoyed it enough that I’m willing to continue on with the rest of the books in the series.
Thank you to the publisher, Minotaur Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I know many Readers will love this series, and I’m not willing to give up on it yet. It’s got a great concept and compelling main characters. I feel like the more I read, the more attached I’ll become.