Synopsis:
Christa joins her boyfriend, Kiernan, and a tour group heading deep into the snowy expanse of the Rocky Mountains. She’s hopeful the trip will allow her to put the ghosts of her past to rest.
But when a bitterly cold snowstorm sweeps the region, the small group is forced to take shelter in an abandoned hunting cabin. Despite the uncomfortably claustrophobic quarters and rapidly dropping temperature, Christa initially believes they’ll be safe as they wait out the storm.
She couldn’t be more wrong.
Deep in the night, their tour guide goes missing . . . only to be discovered the following morning, his severed head impaled on a tree branch outside the cabin.
Terrified, and completely isolated by the storm, Christa is trapped with eight total strangers. They believe that one of them kills for sport . . .and is far from finished.
The storm grows more dangerous, and the number of survivors dwindles one by one. Christa is forced to decide who she can trust before the frozen mountain becomes her tomb.
Review:
Dead of Winter deals, according to Coates, with “a lot of themes about how well we can move past trauma and learning to survive with life-altering circumstances.” As the story opens, Christa Bailey has just embarked on a two-week vacation at Blackstone Alpine Lodge in the Rocky Mountains with her boyfriend, Kiernan. He invited her because the lodge is situated in the area where he grew up and he wants to share his love of the region with her. Their relationship has moved quickly. Although they have only been dating for four months, Christa is fairly certain that Kiernan has planned the getaway so that he can propose in the picturesque setting.
They are enroute to the lodge with a small group led by Brian Hernandez, their bus driver and guide. Steve Peltz, a trucker, is making the trip with his wife, Miri. They were notified that the trip was a raffle prize. Hutch Huang is a disc jockey planning to assess the lodge’s suitability as a wedding venue for one of his friends. Blake Shorey has recently retired from her job as a 911 dispatcher. Simone Wall is a mysterious former member of the military and Alexis Barras is a quiet, withdrawn young woman in her twenties. Denny Olstead is a mechanic accompanied by his teenage son, Grayson. As the story progresses, readers learn that each of the travelers came to be on the trip in different ways.
Christa is a customer service representative with a troubled past. Something horrible occurred on August 8, a little more than two years earlier, that so traumatized her, she quit her job and barely left her home, draining her savings in order to cover her living expenses. She met Kiernan during an “awkward encounter” in the library. Kiernan was studying English literature at the local university and asked Christa for assistance with one of his courses. A month later they began dating. Christa feared that her emotional struggles would derail the relationship, as she explains in her first-person narrative through which Coates relays the story. “When I looked at our future all I could see was a toxic end. So I began pulling back.” But Kiernan would have none of it, taking Christa to meet his mother in the care facility where she resided. The woman barely communicated, and Christa learned that Kiernan’s younger brother died tragically. Soon after, their father took his own life and their mother “crumbled into a person who barely resembled the vivid, laughing figure from his childhood.” Despite the tragedies that befell his family, Kiernan remained an upbeat, happy person and Christa realized they were more alike than different. “He gave me hope. More than that, he became someone I could trust. Someone I could let myself love.”
As the bus proceeds to the lodge, they discover the mountainous road is blocked by a fallen tree. Brian assures the group he carries a chainsaw and fuel for just such a situation. As the rest of the group is busy working on clearing the road, Kiernan asks Christa to take a walk up the hill with him, certain there is a good lookout nearby. Reluctantly, Christa agrees, even though a storm is brewing. Predictably, they become disoriented and unable to find their way back to the bus. Alone, Christa, injured and with a nasty case of frostbite setting in, finds her way to a cabin. The rest of the group is gathered there, having discovered the unlocked cabin after the bus became stuck in the snow.
A blizzard rages as the group huddles in the small cabin with few supplies, no map, no electricity, no cell phone reception, and no means with which to call for help. Since they were scheduled to spend two weeks at the lodge, they know that no one will realize they never reached their destination for many days. As Christa looks around at her fellow travelers, she strongly senses danger and that, aside from their being stranded, something is terribly wrong. She has a “premonition that something bad is coming. Like a storm threatening to break. I’ve learned not to ignore that feeling. The last time I tried was on August 8. And the cost it exacted was extreme.”
They manage to start a fire, but it is still cold in the small, cramped cabin. With no idea how far from their destination the cabin is, a few of them strike out in search of a trail or road that might lead them to the lodge or some other place where they might be able to summon help. The snowstorm has nearly obliterated visibility, however, and they have no choice but to hunker down for the night, sharing what food they can gather from their own suitcases and what the cabin’s owners left behind. However, Brian goes missing and when they make a grisly discovery — Brian’s severed head is hanging on a branch in a nearby pine tree — Christa recognizes that her intuition was accurate. She and the other members of the group are in danger. But who poses a threat to them? Is there someone else lurking in the vicinity of the cabin, ready to ambush the next member of the group who dares to venture outside on their own? Or is the killer one of them? And if so, why was Brian the first victim? Will there be more victims? Is there some connection between them and the killer? If so, what could make someone want to take their lives?
The tense story proceeds at an even pace as more members of the group are felled, their heads displayed on “the tree of the damned.” Simone emerges as the leader of the group and attempts to set up safeguards, insisting that they take turns staying awake at night to monitor each other’s movement, organizing a search of every member’s luggage and personal belongings, and gathering up and stowing away any weapons, such as pocket knives, that they may have brought on the trip with them. But none of those measures prevent the body count from climbing as the food supply dwindles, the storm continues pounding the cabin, and their hope of surviving the ordeal grows dimmer with each successive murder.
Coates deftly takes readers on Christa’s journey to learn the identity of “the butcher,” as she calls the killer. She has no idea who, if any of her fellow stranded travelers, she can trust, and her suspicions shift repeatedly as time elapses. Readers are kept guessing along with Christa as Coates makes them privy to her thought processes and gradually reveals details about what occurred on that fateful night of August 8. As the number of survivors dwindles, she frantically searches for a route through the snow-covered mountains that will lead her and her companions to safety.
Christa is a likable, bright, and sympathetic young woman who recognizes and acknowledges her flaws, takes responsibility for her actions, and hoped Kiernan offered her a chance to find happiness again. Accordingly, readers will find themselves cheering her on. Likewise, the supporting characters are intriguing, with varied backgrounds and histories, although not all are as amiable or appealing as Christa. Alliances appear to be formed, although all of them suspect each other. And they make foolish, confounding choices, including leaving the confines of the cabin by themselves when they know there is a vicious killer either in their midst or nearby.
Dead of Winter is an absorbing, graphically violent tale that will especially delight fans of closed-room mysteries, and keep readers perplexed until Coates delivers the final, shocking plot twist, divulging the identity and motivations of “the butcher.”
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