The Cold Blue Blood — David Handler

A SALT-AND-PEPPER CRIME-SOLVING DUO...

New York film critic Mitch Berger has become a reclusive curmudgeon in his city apartment since his young wife's death. A cottage on Connecticut's Big Sister Island, an old-money WASP community, offers him hopes for a fresh start ... even when eerie footsteps, a sinister handyman, and a knife-wielding, sleepwalking matron begin to remind him of a grade-B horror flick. Nevertheless, actually finding a dead body is a shock ...

Lieutenant Desiree Mitry of the State Police is a shock of another kind. Six-foot-one, with long dreadlocks and legs that reach to heaven, Des is -- gorgeous. She is also a rescuer of feral cats, wary of relationships, and tops at catching killers. But when Mitch provides some help with the blue-blooded locals, the attraction between this unlikely couple is growing -- and so is the danger -- because Mitch is soon the man who knows too much ... and the killer's next target.