Rating: 
Summary: What trailer park do these people live in?
Review: A classic story of a blossoming relationship playing out against an old lover's triangle. I found the relationship between the sheriff and Liesel to be much more interesting than the two brothers fighting over an underachieving woman like two little children fight over a toy. Unfortunately, the book focuses more on the trailer-park antics of drunken, drug using convict brothers rather than the sheriff and his new found romance. I believe Mr. Smolens could really write a good descriptive story if he didn't have to pepper it with four letter words and sleazy situations. I'm not clear as to whether this is his own idea or something his publishers believe will sell books. In either case, this tactic sold one book, but will not sell any more to me.
Rating:
Summary: What trailer park do these people live in?
Review: A classic story of a blossoming relationship playing out against an old lover's triangle. I found the relationship between the sheriff and Liesel to be much more interesting than the two brothers fighting over an underachieving woman like two little children fight over a toy. Unfortunately, the book focuses more on the trailer-park antics of drunken, drug using convict brothers rather than the sheriff and his new found romance. I believe Mr. Smolens could really write a good descriptive story if he didn't have to pepper it with four letter words and sleazy situations. I'm not clear as to whether this is his own idea or something his publishers believe will sell books. In either case, this tactic sold one book, but will not sell any more to me.
Rating: 
Summary: Deflating
Review: After seeing this book on the shelves about a year ago, I was really excited to read it but did not purchase it for a long time. After I got into reading it, I felt let down. Being from Michigan, I really enjoyed the regional imagery, but the characters fell flat, especially the young, drug-addicted, morally-challenged mom who was depicted as beautiful, sexually insatiable, attracted to older men, and completely dependent upon her insane father and pills. I don't mean to be picky, but I also found a flaw in the story line. The action occurs during a severe northern blizzard in which main US highways are almost impassable, yet all of the main characters are able to drive many miles on an old logging road to a lodge deep in the woods...huh??
Rating:
Summary: Another Author Fails to Capture Life in the Upper Peninsula
Review: Although some writers might assume that using the setting of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in an almost-made-for TV script might capture the attention of readers across the US, as a native UPer I beg to disagree. Just because Fargo kicked (thanks to the Cohen brothers) and Jim Harrison's prose has made it to the big screen, thanks to Jack N., his patron, this does not mean that any superficial treatment of the UP will get the writer big bucks. Too bad. While Smolen's tale might work in an urban-conflict setting, in our region of the country, it just doesn't hold up. I won't go into detail about my disappointment with characterization, predicatability of plot and a total lack of understanding of female residents of his mythical UP town, I will say that the work does not reflect any truth about the UP of Michigan. And for UPers this would become a problem. Let's start with my first difficulty with this "Christmas gift" book. The first two words, "Liesl Tiomenen," tell me that whoever tried to get into the Finnish surname game missed a beat. The name might have been Timmonen, Tuoriniemi or Tuorovaara but NEVER Tiomenen. Perhaps the most glaring insufficiency might be a description of the conditions of people who venture out of their houses in the middle of a standard UP winter: (64) "Warren had to admit he was impressed: Norman had walked away. In a blizzard, no less. Chances were very good he'd die out there, freeze to death in the woods. Every spring, bodies were found once the snow finally melted." Hell, if everyone who walked out, drove out or snowshoed out met the fate of Smolen's characters, we Upers would all be dead. What finally remains is the foolish, exotic plotline...capturing bears to drain their gallbladders....suggesting that a bearskin coat belonged to Yates's father..."that he was the last real mountain man to live in the Hurons" or that there might be an abundance of moose in the Huron Mountains. I would suggest that someone like Smolens, who thinks that he can capture the UP lifestyle should get out and meet the natives. We're not all as ignorant as he thinks.
Rating: 
Summary: BRR it's cold Eh.
Review: Certainly has the feel of the winter that can enhance our state at times.Exspecially the upper. I enjoyed this page turner and read it very quickly. The characters were expanded well I have known people with those attitudes and ways, all and all I think his understanding of a climate, the people that live there, and the good and bad that lives in the heart of man were expressed well in the book. This is my first by Mr. Smolens,it will not be my last.
Rating:
Summary: BRR it's cold Eh.
Review: Certainly has the feel of the winter that can enhance our state at times.Exspecially the upper. I enjoyed this page turner and read it very quickly. The characters were expanded well I have known people with those attitudes and ways, all and all I think his understanding of a climate, the people that live there, and the good and bad that lives in the heart of man were expressed well in the book. This is my first by Mr. Smolens,it will not be my last.
Rating:
Summary: Its warm coat time
Review: Cold is a fine book, that should be enjoyed for what it is, a phychological/mystery. Set in the rugged Upper Pennisula of Michigan in the dead of winter, the story unfolds in such a riveting manner that you will have a very hard time in putting it down. The story and the cold will stay with you for awhile after you finish reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Its warm coat time
Review: Cold is a fine book, that should be enjoyed for what it is, a phychological/mystery. Set in the rugged Upper Pennisula of Michigan in the dead of winter, the story unfolds in such a riveting manner that you will have a very hard time in putting it down. The story and the cold will stay with you for awhile after you finish reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: Characters we don't care about.
Review: From jumping scene to scene with characters it is difficult to care about to NAMING those characters (Warren, Noel, Norman), I find little art in this tale from the head of the Fine Arts Department of Northern Michican. Even the heroes, Del Maki and Liesl don't seem to grow very much. Their pedestrian lives are unexciting and show very little sisu or growth through their trials. This is a very "pretty" book in its hardbound form. And the first two pages excited me. After that the prose and sense of story fell apart. The end provided no epiphany or value for the read. Worse, I don't think Smolens understands "Cold." A blizzard, yes. But when he said folks who fell dead in the snow would be found in the spring, he jerked me out of his fictional dream, and I knew he didn't understand the Upper Peninsula. In the UP we have more deer than people--and nothing goes to waste in the woods. A body, any body, will be fought over and torn apart by the beasts: coyotes, eagles, and crows to name a few. Just as vultures circling above a desert speak of death or imminent death, so too do ravens and crows circling the woods signal trouble in Cold country. Unless his bodies are in the IGA parking lot, Smolens won't find a human form refrigerated until spring. A skeleton he might find. It's a pity the insights, prose, and story didn't match the pretty book. I can't believe this book got published at all.
Rating:
Summary: Cold
Review: I actually found this book to be a good page turner, a little too gory for my personal taste but was absolutely dumbfounded by the last sentence. And so, as this appears the only way to find out what actually happened at the very end, I write. Would like an answer. ps@striegela.com
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