Twenty years ago, she was a cult leader's innocent daughter and he was an undercover agent who broke her heart and destroyed her life. Now he's back...
ASAC Steve (Mac) McKenzie is leading a task force investigating a series of malicious crimes in the heart of Washington, DC. His undercover work in an antigovernment compound twenty years earlier is related—as is the sweet, innocent girl he befriended back then. Now that girl is a beautiful woman, and she has something to hide.
Tess Fallon spent a lifetime trying to outrun her family's bigotry, but someone is using the anniversary of her father's death to carry out evil crimes and she's terrified her younger brother is involved. She sets out to uncover the truth and comes face-to-face with a man she once idolized, a man she thought long dead. As the crimes escalate, it becomes obvious the killer has an agenda, and Tess and Mac are running out of time to stop him.
Will the perpetrator use a decades-old dream of revolution to attack the federal government? And will the fact that Tess and Mac have fallen hard for one another give a stone-cold killer the power to destroy them?
Finalist in the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence for Single Title Romantic Suspense.
One of the strongest elements of Cold Malice is the world‑building. Tess’s traumatic upbringing inside a white supremacist, abusive family is portrayed with unsettling clarity, and it gives the story a dark, gritty foundation that feels all too believable. Mac’s undercover work within that same family adds another layer of tension, and the suspense throughout the book is consistently gripping.
Where the story faltered for me was in the romance. I didn’t love the way Mac treated Tess. He fluctuated so much between being defensive of her to being suspicious of her that it became frustrating, especially given everything she’d already endured. And while decades had passed since their first meeting, the fact that Tess was a child and Mac was a young adult at the time made their eventual romance feel uncomfortable for me. It’s a dynamic that never fully stopped feeling a bit icky.
There’s also one suspect who stands out early on, and it was surprising that none of the characters connected the dots until the very end. It didn’t ruin the story, but it did make the mystery feel a little less sharp than the tension deserved. However, those final moments when the reveal was made made for the most suspenseful and heartpounding reading.
Overall, the atmosphere, backstory, and suspense are excellent.
This is a series I prefer to enjoy in audio, as Eric G Dove's excellent narration elevates the experience every single time.
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