Review: Cold Shot by Dani Pettrey

Amazon Description

Four Best Friends.
And Then One Went Missing . . .

In college, Griffin McCray and his three best friends had their lives planned out. Griffin and Luke Gallagher would join the Baltimore Police Department, Declan Grey would head to the FBI, and Parker Mitchell would study to become a crime scene analyst. But then Luke vanished before graduation and their world--and friendships--crumbled.

Now years later, Griffin has left the police and his friendships behind. Still trying to forget a case that went bad when he was a SWAT team sniper, he's living a quiet life as a park ranger at Gettysburg. Quiet until skeletal remains are uncovered near Little Round Top--and they aren't Civil War-era.

Griffin just wants the case to go away, but charming forensic anthropologist Finley Scott discovers evidence pointing to the work of an expert sniper. When FBI agent Declan Grey steps in to take over the case, past and present collide. Griffin soon realizes he'll need to confront some of the darkest days of his life if he--and those he cares about--are going to escape a downward spiral of crime, danger, and murder.

My Review

The writing, plot and characters in Cold Shot were all solid, but it felt as if the story was trying to achieve too much, trying to bring in too much history (which is alluded to in the Amazon description, but an ebook doesn’t have a back cover, so it wasn’t so obvious). The story and characters felt a little forced at times, as though the author was trying to hide then reveal the history connecting the main characters. I found it difficult to place where the novel was set at first—I guess most Americans know where Gettysburg is, but not all Christian fiction readers are American.

It also felt as though there were too many characters—most romantic suspense novels have the hero and heroine, plus a couple of related men or women who are being set up to lead in future novels in the series. This was the case, but there were too many additional characters—not just the four college friends, but others as well. It felt as though the story had moved from Griffin and Finley to focussing on other characters, including one off-stage ‘missing’ character (which was a too-obvious set-up for a future book).

The overabundance of characters combined with the complex plot meant the novel lost focus. It wasn’t bad: I simply didn’t enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the books in her earlier Alaskan Courage series.

Thanks to Bethany House Publishers and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.