She Treads Softly: Cold Burn

Saturday, April 12, 2025

Cold Burn

Cold Burn by A. J. Landau
4/29/25; 336 pages
St. Martin's
A National Parks Series #2

Cold Burn by A. J. Landau (aka Jon Land, Jeff Ayers) is a highly recommended investigative thriller and climate science fiction novel. Cold Burn, following 2024's Leave No Trace, is the second book in their National Park Series.

National Park Service investigator Michael Walker is investigating the theft of artifacts when the case takes a fatal turn and becomes more mysterious. Then he is called to Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska to look for a team of missing U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists. FBI investigator Gina Delgado works on the case of a body found in Florida’s Everglades National Park. The body is discovered to be a USGS intern, but before she can wrap up the case, she is called to the scene of a sunken U.S. nuclear submarine where the entire crew has inexplicably been killed. Eventually all the action leads back to one man.

Chapters in the novel switch between multiple locations and characters with no connections in sight, which can feel disconcerting at first. Readers may be tempted to set the novel aside, but keep with it and everything will sort itself out. The mystery deepens as the action accelerates, connections begin to appear, and the tension increases up to a global scale. As in the first book in the series the antagonists are identified early on but this time all the various story lines are intriguing.

This is the second book in the series but it can be read as a standalone. Reading Leave No Trace, however, will provide more background information about the characters which helps with their development and portrayal as individuals. The focus is on the action rather than the parks. Expect to have to suspend disbelief along the way, with some lecturing on social/political topics included. 3.5 rounded up

Cold Burn will be appreciate by readers who like action-packed novels. Thanks to St. Martin's Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.