When NYPD detective Miles Jordan rents a cabin within the Catskills, his winter trip plans embrace “pancakes, beer, and cross-country snowboarding,” not a murder chilly case. His arrival in a small mountain city, nonetheless, coincides with the twenty fifth anniversary of the unsolved homicide of Jesse Anne Kelly, a state trooper’s spouse. On the request of the sufferer’s sister—and towards the desires of the sufferer’s husband, now the city’s police chief—Miles is reluctantly drawn into the case and the lives of these most affected. Miles isn’t the stereotypical supercop: He’s good and good trying, however at age 38 he’s packing additional kilos, recovering from latest knee surgical procedure, 5 years out from a gentle coronary heart assault, and pushed by fierce empathy for victims of violent crime. (The truth that Miles is Black isn’t a problem in his interactions, though the Fifties vibe of a diner he visits does invite his reflection that he wouldn’t have been welcome to eat there throughout that period.) As tensions mount and the case builds to its lethal conclusion, the creator affords up potential suspects with sufficient misdirection to maintain readers second-guessing. Is the police chief’s refusal of Miles’ assist resulting from grief, guilt, or each? How offended was Jesse’s former work colleague, fired from his job for sexual harassment? Then there’s the gifted artist, whose self-destructive descent into alcoholism started shortly after Jesse’s demise. Practical dialogue and clear, descriptive prose propel the narrative; in a derelict shack, damaged drywall exposes “pink insulation like guts in an open wound.” The ever-present winter climate displays the temper and setting, the frigid bleakness (“The icy wind carried the perfume of cedar and howled like a pack of wolves”) lending poignant significance to the e-book’s title. That is the third novel in Ceron’s Miles Jordan Thriller Thriller sequence, following Demise of the Saltwater Blonde (2022) and Demise within the Metropolis of Bridges (2022).