Cold Heart

By Lynda La Plante

My Rating: 3

Genre: Mystery Thriller

Finished on: June 16th, 2020

Okay.. What genre was this book, mystery? Or Philosophy? 
What was the ending even about? 
The death of the protagonist herself, Lorraine Page?!? 

(Yep, sorry for the spoiler)

And that was the "ultimate" punishment of her life?? Philosophy much? There was no proper justice at all, at least not by the end of book anyway. 


Okay. Breathe. 
I'll come from beginning. 


Like any other mystery book, this started off with an interesting note. Somebody dies. There are two three suspects. And then it got SUPER boring when the suspicions were revolving around 3 main people!

Kendall, Vallence, Sonja.

Poor Cindy dies, Kendall dies and with utter shock we come to know even Raymond Vallence dies! 

Not sure why Cindy had to die, I expected something much worse happened with Cindy that she simply let herself get killed by someone else. But by the end we come to know it was pretty much suicide. Raymond had no other purpose to kill Cindy rather than with some rage assuming she did kill Harry. And Cindy... Simply agrees to that? Doesn't deny it? Doesn't fight for her life? Simply lets herself get killed when she was so hysterical when she was taken into custody? 

Everyone had been right. Cindy is stupid. 

Kendall's death came as a surprise. Her own greed became the cause of her own painful death. 
And Raymond's death was silly too. I mean, Harry threatens to leak the videos, he heard it. Cops have the footages and the videos still may or may not be likely to get leaked, he is still okay. Sonja in the call threatens to leak videos, and he decides to end his life? And this is moments after knowing full well that Lorraine will be rewarding him with some money once the fraud case is settled. 

Did this make sense to you? Not to me. 

Okay. All dead. So who is left, and who can be the killer? Of course its Sonja, that much was pretty clear. We know the "why" too. Why she'd want to kill her ex-husband. But how did she do it? We all wanted to know that. 

So in between we come know the threats Lorraine has been receiving are not related to Harry Nathan's case at all. But something from her past coming back to haunt her. And that past ended up killing Decker too. He was such a sweet :(

His death was shocking. How many are even going to die in this book? 

The book progressed slowly, and some 100 pages later everything was coming together when she finally visits Sonja Nathan's place. Arthur's wariness in the beginning was a dead giveaway, no pun intended.  They are obviously hiding something. 

And Sonja's talks about Harry made me almost pity her. I thought, even if she's his murderer, he deserved it. Everyone wanted him dead anyway. And in the entire book, if anyone was bothered that he died, it was because he didn't die through their hands, and probably wished him to resurrect so that they themselves have the satisfaction of brutally killing him for the fraud he did against them all. 

And Sonja seemed cool, that she pulled of this amazing murder without being suspected by anyone. Even Arthur couldn't guess it! 

So yeah, she was cool, until her craziness reached some insane level, and she decided to remove even Lorraine out of her way. 

Even till the last page of the book, I couldn't guess who was her killer. I kept thinking it's the kid Eric Lee Judd. And when Jake Burton tells Lorraine that they are finally catching her killer, that really took me off my guard. 

And it makes sense. Whoever was the attacker, was frantically searching for something in her bag. Why would Eric do it? He would just kill, be satisfied and go away. 

This makes sense that whoever Sonja sent to beat the hell outta Lorraine was searching for some evidence of some kind which might give hints that she has solved the Nathan case. 

And.. Also. Her dying scene. Let me be a bit brutally honest here, but, it was pathetic.

She decided to de-prioritise her career, didn't she? She decided to quit Page Investigations to start a new life with her new family, didn't she? So why in her last moments Lorraine, or her mind, or her soul, or whatever it was, spent the last moments getting happy that she solved the "Nathan Case"? 

Was that the ultimate goal of her life? Or am I missing some philosophical explanation here? 

Sigh, anyway. 

The ending was a bit open. The cops have a lead about the murderer now. They may or may not catch the killer. They may or may not retrieve the fraud money from Sonja. 

And all those people who died, may or may not get justice. 
And thaaat, was the end. Yep.

I would have given a 4. But I realized while writing the review how so much of the plot seemed silly. So it's a 3 now.

A quote from the book:

Everyone who loves has a right to be loved.

Words: 870

Chars: 4741