The Cold Room (Taylor Jackson, #4) (A Taylor Jackson Thriller) (Taylor Jackson Novels (Paperback))

by J T Ellison

[ibeforem]

This was a mostly solid mystery. Ellison gives us an unusual crime, committed by an unusual criminal in an unusual way. And, I’m always excited to read a police procedural that isn’t set in New York or southern California. But there were a few pieces that bothered me.

One was Memphis. I didn’t quite get his obsession with Taylor, and would have liked a bit more a clue. Also, I didn’t think the reason he was sent to the U.S. was very good — he spent more time tagging along with Taylor and Baldwin than worrying about his own case. I suspect we’ll be seeing much more of him in the next book. The other piece that didn’t make a lot of sense to me was the tiny subplot with Taylor’s new boss. It ended up being worthless filler, as he appears at the beginning, disappears by the end, and doesn’t have any sort of significant affect on the novel’s events.

I found the book a bit dense, and realized way too late that I should have started this series from the beginning. There were too many references to past events without sufficient information to back them up for me to recommend this to anyone who hasn’t already read the first three books in the series. But, the story did keep me reading, and I would be interested in starting the series from the beginning to see what else Ellison has to offer.