Set in a remote Cumbrian village, DI James Walker's quiet Christmas is interrupted by the tragedy at a remote farm. This atmospheric police procedural explores three deaths, possibly linked to a cold case at the same location years before. The detailed investigation allows the reader an omnipotent view of the evidence and suspects. Relatable characters twisty plot keep the reader absorbed. The final suspenseful chapters build to an impactful conclusion.

This is a complete story, but if you enjoy chilling crime novels, the first one has a festive theme too.

I received a copy of this book from Avon Books UK via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Another fantastically gripping, unputdownable thriller from Alex Pine. I loved this book and cannot wait for his next book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. I had not read the previous books in this detective series but was able to pick up the story nonetheless. I enjoyed this book. Well written, good characters and kept me interested to the end!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a free ARC of this book. I have chosen to write this honest review voluntarily.
This is the second book in the series but information about the previous case / book is given at the start of this novel so that readers become familiar with relevant facts. This author is reported to have written other books so I was expecting a level of accomplishment that was not reached. I found the writing style rather juvenile, such as 'James knew that the prints would be a key piece of forensic evidence' (anyone who reads this type of novel knows that), "I know the couple who run it so hopefully they'll remember him" (knowing someone doesn't mean they will remember a customer) and ".... believed that she was sadly killed." (how do you kill someone sadly?). These are just a few examples of the poor grammar and silly phrases used about the police work and evidence collection. The pace was extremely slow and far from thrilling, I gave up at 30%.

I loved this book!

This book had a lot of things going for it (dual time line situation, good characters, compelling writing) but the thing that struck me most about it was that it reminded me a lot of Ragnar Jonasson. The isolated location, the crime from a long time ago, the way the investigation is detailed and tight but not so much so that the details of the investigation make it a straight up police procedural... all around just fantastic.

While I would definitely say it's more of a slow burn than a thriller, I would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good mystery and highly recommend it to fans of Ragnar Jonasson!

This book was a well-written and engrossing crime story. It was not in any way frivolous with descriptions, it felt real-life like and I could imagine this book being made into a TV drama series, where we see how police work to solve gripping crimes.

The characters were well-developed and believable, I particularly enjoyed how they worked together and we got to know the back-story of the main character throughout.

The plot was well-thought out and was reminiscent of a well-known real-life crime yet had hidden twists and intrigues that definitely set it apart from anything you think you may know when beginning to read this novel.

If crime that is easily imaginable in real-life is for you, then I recommend you read this.

I would read another book by this author but have awarded 4 stars because at times I felt the book was heavy on police procedure (although I can appreciate this is to make it more believable!).

I have not read the previous book in this series, but it did not impair my understanding of this story. The Killer in the Snow has in its plot two different crimes that happened in the same house 24 years apart and most disturbingly is that those two crimes seem to be very similar. At the same time that James is working to unveil the culprit to the second murder of a family, he sees himself drawn to the previous crime. Each new evidence or new lead ends up bringing more doubts and questions instead of a solution. It seems like the two events are linked together, their most desirable culprits seem to be telling the truth, and to top it all, James himself is threatened again by the man who swore to kill him, and that led to his move from London to Cumbria. The detailed police procedural steps show how James' mind works and help the reader to understand the plot. Easy to read and entertaining.
I downloaded a free copy of this book through NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.

DI James Walker is back with another case to solve. And, what a case it is! The story actually is about two murders….the story goes back and forth between the two murders. How do the past and present murder connect?
The Killer in the Snow is a engaging and intricately woven murder mystery with many twists and turns! The storyline is pretty twisted. Definitely a intriguing crime thriller that had me reading on Into the night.
I can’t wait to read the next book in the series!
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read this book for my honest opinion. All opinions expressed are my own.

This book has a good plot, but I found the writing boring and uninteresting. It did have a good resolution and good dialogue. I did need more suspense to keep me interested.

I didn't realise this was part of a series however it works OK as a stand alone. There was enough back story to know what was going on. For me the book was not as fast paced as I thought it would be. It was an enjoyable read. It did have interesting characters and plot. The chapters were nice and short and it was well written.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion

I thoroughly enjoyed this book which was fairly easy to follow with no elaborate set ups required nor any in depth explanations shoe horned in to facilitate an understanding of what was going on. The main characters came across as real enough but the background characters remain just that with no thought given to fleshing any of them out. The intertwining of two crimes set decades apart was particularly well done although I have to admit that I saw some of the big twist in the ending coming well in advance. Whether that was due to it being signposted by the author or just a lucky guess on my part I'm not sure but it didn't rob me of my enjoyment of the story to the end.
I would recommend this to someone looking for a crime thriller where they don't need to keep making notes as they go along just to be able to understand it.
Thanks to Avon Books and Netgalley for the advance copy to review.

Firstly, thank you to #NetGalley and #AvonBooksUK for giving me a digital advanced reader's copy of #TheKillerInTheSnow #SolveTheColdCase by #AlexPine in exchange for a genuine review.

I have been reading quite a few detective series and I'm so happy that this one got me flipping through the pages yet again. The story was quite intriguing and the way the author has written the book was very engaging. There was never a dull moment in this action-packed story and of course, I definitely loved every bit of twists in this book. Even though there were quite a number of characters in it - that didn't change the fact that I liked this read. I give it 4/5 stars. Thank you Alex Pine.

A father heads home to spend his last Christmas with his family at there farm. Days later three people are found dead in there home. DI James Walker is tasked with solving the crime. It also appears another couple were found dead in the same home many years before.
I figured out what was going on early on in the book. However, this was a great police procedural story which was a quick and easy read.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to see an arc

An interesting premise and a festive mystery... DI James Walker is back with another case to solve this Christmas!

The story follows on from the events of the first book, set a year after the chilling 12 days of Christmas murders. With another Christmas rolling around and plenty more snow forecast, James is hoping for a much more peaceful Yuletide this year. Unfortunately, though, it seems like fate has other plans.

The plot is interesting because it entwines two cases together into one storyline. The first is the current case with the bodies of three members of the same family discovered in their remote farmhouse. The second is a cold case from twenty years ago, where another couple died in the same farmhouse. Coincidence? DI Walker certainly doesn't think so!

Elements from both cases are interspersed throughout the book, leaving a tangled web of clues for the detectives to unpick. Compared to the first book in the series, this one places a much greater focus on the case and the progress of the investigation. This helps to centre the story and provide it with a much-needed pace.

Some of the dialogue felt stilted and I still struggled to relate to many of the characters, similar to my feelings about book one. When James discusses the ins and outs of this highly confidential case with his wife, it just feels glaringly unrealistic. It's a shame because the plot is executed much more strongly than in The Christmas Killer.

The Killer in the Snow is a solid crime thriller, perfect for curling up with this Christmas.

An enjoyable Murder mystery that keeps you reading.
Although this is the second book following this police detective, I hadn’t read the first and this story flows well enough to grasp the back story, so it works well as a stand alone novel as well as a sequel.
It’s Christmas Eve, and a terrible tragedy is about to happen at a local farm. At first, it appears to be a tragic Murder suicide, but the family have dark skeletons in their past, and it soon becomes apparent that this will not be a straightforward case.
Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will definitely go back and read the first book in the series.
I was totally engrossed in this fast moving story from beginning to end.
A family of three die at a remote farmhouse on Christmas Eve but was it murder-suicide or murder staged to look like it ? The family had major financial and relationship problems, so easy to believe the first scenario could have occurred.
However, strangely enough the previous owners of the farmhouse died in an almost similar circumstances twenty years earlier. What’s more creepy is that the newly deceased farmer worked on the farm when the first family died.
I could almost feel the frustration as the murder suspects mounted up only to be ruled out one by one. As though there wasn’t enough twists and turns throughout the book, the ending also turned out to be quite dramatic and unexpected.
The reader is also filled with the anticipation that a murderer on the run will finally track down DI James Walker and his wife who left London because of him.
I really hope there will be more in this brilliant series.

Oh my stars! Brilliantly done! Although this is book #2 of the series, I haven’t read the first one and don’t feel like I was missing anything as the author gave a brief introduction to the main characters at the beginning of the book. I got completely sucked in and found myself engrossed in the story. The plot was easy to follow yet there were lots of complications that added depth. Although this is heavily laden with police procedures (which I like!),there is still lots to the story that will keep those that might not like it as much engaged. Will highly recommend this!
A cozy Christmas season is here, unlike last Christmas when a serial killer was on the loose. Then a call comes in that a family of 3 has been found murdered in their home and DI Walker is the lead investigator, despite his desire to have a quiet Christmas at home with his pregnant wife and try to forget about the events of last year. In starting to put the clues together, he finds a hidden wall where someone has clearly been watching the family without them knowing. Could they have seen what happened? Who is it that’s been watching? On top of that, it turns out that this is the house where a 24 year old cold case took place. They have to be connected somehow, right? DI Walker believes so, but he has to figure out how all while dealing with the threat of someone he arrested previously coming back for retaliation.
If you like a complex scene but is at he same time easy to follow and well developed characters, this is a book for you.
Thanks to Avon Books UK and Netgalley for this Arc in exchange for my review.

So, normally I always prefer the first in a series, but I much preferred this book, I loved it that much that it’s one of my favourite books of the year!

I loved following James as he solved the cases, but also seeing his and Annie’s life together.

The cases were fantastic, my hunches were correct (not that it spoilt the book in any way) but the ending was fantastic, didn’t see that twist!

I was hooked on this book and am now waiting (un)patiently for the next instalment!

Thank you to the publishers for my review copy, the ebook is out now and it will be out in paperback on the 11/11/21

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The second one I have read by this author. I love the location, a place I am very familiar with, a lovely part of the world, unless a killer is waiting.
The idea of lots of snow also appeals as you can cosy up with this book whilst the winter weather does its worst.
A few too many cliches in the text, but on the whole a satisfying read.

This review has been published with Waterstones

It’s been a year since a serial killer haunted Kirkby Abbey, and this year Detective James Walker just wants to have a quiet festive season with his wife, Annie. Unfortunately, the murder of a family on their farm on Christmas Eve puts paid to those plans. When Robert and Mary Bateman are found dead along with their daughter Charlotte in an apparent murder-suicide, the community is rocked, not least because Oaktree Farm was the site of a similar tragedy twenty-four years previously, which left a couple dead and their daughter missing. As the investigation wears on, James begins to realise that perhaps the deaths of the residents of Oaktree farm are linked together more strongly than he imagined.

“The Killer in the Snow” is the second book in the DI James Walker series, and it was just as enjoyable as (if not more so) its predecessor. I read the first James Walker book a year ago, and remember it being a really wonderfully atmospheric mystery set in a small town around Christmas, which just ticked all my boxes. My gripes with the previous book were that the writing and dialogue sometimes felt a little bit too stiff and that there was a subplot that trailed through the book that felt as if it had no business being there. On the first of these aspects, “The Killer in the Snow” has vastly improved: I did not feel that there was any awkward or stumbling dialogue in this book, and I found it was easy to read and digest. I was never once pulled from the story because of weirdly stiff dialogue, which I was glad of.

However, on the second note, the book still left something to be desired. There was still a subplot running through this book that dealt with Andrew Sullivan – the man who had terrorized James and Annie while they lived in London and precipitated their move to Kirkby Abbey. Without giving anything away, this subplot felt a little bit shoehorned into the book and it didn’t feel as fully developed as it could have been. I recognize that there was little else the author could do in terms of resolving it in the timeframe (because anything more prolonged would have been completely unrealistic), but I do think that it may have been better served as the plot of a book its own. This didn’t detract from the overall enjoyment of this book, though; I just thought that the book wasn’t quite big enough to balance both plots.

As for the main plot – the murder investigation – I thought it moved along at a good pace and was engaging. The approach of taking the characters from one interview to the next, though, did feel a little bit same-y, and I felt that this technique wasn’t quite as compelling as other authors’ usage of it. I also found it a little bit repetitive when James would conduct a team meeting and summarise the new findings and clues of the day for the benefit of the rest of the team. This felt a bit like padding, and something which could have been sacrificed for a little bit more subplot focus. That being said, the actual mystery was interesting, and where the book did repeat itself a little, it was short enough to be over before you really noticed it.

Disappointingly, I spotted the major twist reveal at the end of the book by about 40% of the way through the book. This isn’t to say it’s a bad twist; in fact, the only reason I spotted it was because I thought “You know what would be a great twist in this book?” and apparently Alex Pine thought the same thing. Overall, I think the story was good, although I was hoping for another big twist to really break the ending wide open, like in Pine’s first book.

All in all, I think “The Killer in the Snow” is a really good follow-up to “The Christmas Killer” and I definitely think that Alex Pine has cemented himself as a go-to author for me. All the things I enjoyed about the first James Walker mystery were back, and some of the things I didn’t enjoy were smoothed over. All in all, I think this is a great book to pick up (as a sequel or standalone; it works well enough either way), with a satisfying mystery set in a beautifully cosy setting that is just perfect for getting lost in. I am very much looking forward to the next book that Alex Pine has to offer.

Thanks to Avon Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for a review.