Winter House

NYPD Detective Mallory and her partner are called to Winter House to investigate a simple case of an intruder killed by someone he was trying to rob. But nothing is as it seems--the intruder wasn't stabbed by the pair of scissors sticking out of his chest, but by an ice pick. And Winter House isn't just any house; the mansion on Central Park was the scene of multiple unsolved murders years ago--ice pick murders. A street kid adopted by a cop, Mallory has become a ruthless and brilliant detective in her own right. She talks her boss into giving her and her partner three days to solve both murders. Alyssa Bresnahan skillfully brings individual characters to life. Her impeccable pacing and narrative skills involve the listener completely in this complex mystery. J.D.P. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

September 27, 2004
An ice pick is the murder weapon of choice in O'Connell's new noir featuring glacier-cool detective Kathy Mallory. A former homeless child-thief adopted by a kind-hearted New York cop, Mallory has parlayed her familiarity with the shady side of society into a successful—if somewhat unorthodox—career as a sleuth (she picks complex locks with aplomb and her investigative methods flirt with the limits of the law). When Nedda Winter, missing for 58 years following the massacre of her family at their New York mansion, reappears at the scene of the crime—now the site of a brand-new homicide—Mallory ("till feral in many ways") digs her red lacquered nails right into the case. Cleo and Lionel Winter are mystified by their sister Nedda's return, certain they were the only survivors of the long-ago stabbing rampage. Mallory, working alongside sartorially challenged homicide detective Riker and psychologist Charles Butler, suspects the reason lies with Cleo's ex-husband, Sheldon Smyth, a slick estate lawyer with exclusive access to the Winter family's multimillion-dollar trust. But Smyth's dubious deeds are just the tip of the ice pick in the hands of O'Connell, known for her idiosyncratic characters and labyrinthine plots in eight previous thrillers including Mallory's Oracle
and Dead Famous
. Vivid prose keeps the pages turning in this intricate tale of betrayal, buried secrets and lives chopped short in the name of greed.