The Cold Truth (Julian Palmer Thrillers) - Hardcover

Stone, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312199422 ISBN 13: 9780312199425

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1999

Synopsis

Sent to intern with a legendary police chief in upper New York State, police trainee Julian Palmer finds herself investigating the baffling murder of a young woman whose killer left behind no clues. A first novel. 30,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan Stone is a graduate of Yale, where he was a Scholar of the House in Fiction-Writing, and twice won the English Department's John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Best Imaginative Writing. He works in the advertising business, and lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children. This is his first novel.

Reviews

Winston "Bear" Edwards is a huge man. A sheriff for 30 years in Canaanville, a small town in upper New York State, he has become a police legend with no unsolved murders in his jurisdictionAuntil the savage stabbing death of a local waitress threatens to mar his record. Enter young, beautiful police academy trainee Julian Palmer, assigned at her own request as an intern to Edwards in an experimental program. From their first remarkable interview, when Edwards erupts in anger when he learns "Julian" is female, not male, the two are locked in a metaphorical embrace that's sometimes like combat, sometimes like a lover's clinch. Edwards is an unconventional police chief and Julian is appalled by some of his methods, yet intrigued by his results. Stone adds to their volatile mix a quirky psychic and Edwards's equally large and angry wife, Estelle; plus wintry blasts of wind and snow. What results is a stunning, risk-taking first novel that mystery fans will celebrate. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Talk about timing. Julian Palmer, a female recruit sent forth from the New York City Police Academy to serve as the first-ever intern to Winston Bear Edwards, retiring police chief of Canaanville, in the upstate Snow Belt, arrives only a month after the chief's very first unsolved homicide. The victim is a 21-year-old waitress named Sarah Langley; the means of death brutal; and the only lead from volunteer psychic Wayne Hill, a sometime mental patient of Dr. Ernest Tibor's who tested zero for psychic ability at Duke University's parapsychology center. After a few days at the local Ramada Inn, Julian succumbs to a pressing invitation from Edwards's wife Estelle to stay in the room over their barn, and from that point on the only other events that occur are her furious tangles with the rest of the tiny cast over whodunit. Hill, Tibor, Edwards, Estelle, and another of Tibor's patients named Eugene Green: those are all the possible suspects, and first-timer Stone makes each come to attention and jump through hoops with a magician's skill and lion tamer's nerve. The final effect suggests Hugh Pentecost's ``Challenge to the Reader'' cruelly drawn out to novel length; long after you've given up trying to figure out where the next twist is coming from, Stone's just getting warmed up. A chilling little gem with the ferocious logic of a Beethoven quartet. ($50,000 ad/promo) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312199422
• ISBN 13: 9780312199425
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288