Chill Factor by Sandra Brown

Lust, jealousy and murder suffuse Brown's crisp thriller (after White Hot), set in the snowbound mountains of North Carolina. Lilly and Dutch Burton's marriage didn't withstand the loss of their three-year-old daughter, despite their attempt at a fresh start with the purchase of a vacation cabin in bucolic Cleary, N.C., where the novel opens on the divorced couple discussing its sale. Dutch is now Cleary's chief of police, and Lilly is a magazine editor in Atlanta. As she races back to the city to beat a blizzard, her car skids out, striking a hiker emerging from the woods. Turns out he's a man she knows: handsome freelance writer Ben Tierney, whom she met and flirted with the summer before. With no choice but to wait out the storm in the cabin with Ben, who is injured, Lilly calls Dutch, but he can't reach her via the now impassable mountain road. Meanwhile, Cleary is haunted by the case of five missing women - all now feared dead. With Lilly still stranded, Dutch goes ballistic when the FBI arrives in town with evidence that Tierney is the serial killer.

I quite enjoyed it. I didn't guess whodunnit till just before she let you in on the secret, which I particularly enjoy since it is rare. But, it was mostly just a light read for me, so I think I was clearly under-estimating the possibility that it wasn't just going to be the most obvious person. A little bit of romance, a little bit of crazy and of course a murder mystery thrown in the mix.

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