Disaster Looms Closer Than You Think in Chilling National Park Thriller

Cold Burn by A.J. Landau

A very sophisticated, intelligent thriller that will leave the reader thinking about it long after finishing.

Cold Burn is the second book in A.J Landau’s National Parks Thriller series and — after finishing it — I’m rushing to read the first one. Wow! This is one action-packed, page-turning and yet sophisticated thriller where the stakes couldn’t be higher — no less than the future of the world and the fate of all mankind.

It grabs you by the throat right from the very beginning when a team of scientists in Glacier National Park in Alaska, fleeing a massive avalanche, desperately seeks safety in a mysterious cave — where their fate is unknown.

Next a U.S. submarine collides with a long-dormant explosive device in the icy waters off Alaska, and the entire crew inside is left stranded and marooned at the bottom of the ocean.

Then, an environment science intern — working on a U.S. government geological survey team’s experiments which could dramatically affect the world’s fragile ecosystem — is found murdered in the Florida Everglades, amid evidence that he was tortured first to get evidence about the top-secret government project.

An Iconic Duo with a Colossal Task Ahead

What do these seemingly disparate events have in common?

Nothing at first, but A.J. Landau (which is actually a pen name for co-authors Jon Land and Jeff Ayers) does a masterful job of pulling together the pieces of an ancient puzzle in which a deadly prehistoric organism, frozen in ice until global warming somehow set it free, now threatens to wipe out all life on earth unless it can be stopped.

The two main characters fighting to do this are Michael Walker, a National Parks Service special agent, and Gina Delgado, an FBI special investigator.

Walker starts out in the book looking for what his agency believes are smugglers of priceless artifacts; then discovers that it is really this mind-boggling organism from below the ice that the smugglers are after. Finally, he is forced to unravel the mystery of what happened to the team of scientists who mysteriously vanished after seeking refuge in the Alaska cave from the avalanche.

Delgado is dispatched by the White House — for reasons she doesn’t at first understand — to investigate the murder of the science intern in the Everglades, and soon uncovers the real secret story behind the government project called Cold Burn that the victim had been working on.

From Greedy Billionaires to Dirty Politicians

There are two bad guys in this book, too.

Really, really bad guys!

The first is a billionaire businessman who believes the secret organism from under the ice will be the scientific key he needs to achieve his dream of a fuel source powerful enough to send a rocket to Mars and back, and he’s willing to use anything it takes — money, betrayal, even murder — to achieve that dream.

Even more evil than him though, as we eventually find out in the book, is a power-crazed Russian general fighting the war in Ukraine who desperately wants to control the organism in order to use it as the ultimate weapon to destroy any of his political enemies and give him total control to rule the world.

Oh, and there are also people high up in the U.S. government — all the way to the White House — who have their own motives for achieving what they want with Operation Cold Burn, and Walker and Delgado soon realize that no one can be really trusted with so much at stake for the world.

A Thriller You Don’t Want to Miss!

There’s a lot of scientific stuff in this book about climate change, the ecosystem and the like to explain the battle against this prehistoric organism now set free to potentially wipe out mankind. But there’s no overload of information, and it all fits nicely into explaining the story. Cold Burn is a very sophisticated, intelligent thriller that will leave the reader thinking about it long after finishing.

And, even though it’s actually written by two authors — Land and Ayers — you can’t tell who did what, it all moves very smoothly and quickly through one voice until the dramatic conclusion.

No spoilers here, but the ending is very satisfying — and there seems to be no doubt that we’ll see Michael Walker and Gina Delgado in another National Parks Thriller soon.

Can’t wait!

A. J. LANDAU is the pseudonym for two authors, Jon Land, the award-winning, bestselling author and co-author of more than 50 books, and Jeff Ayers, reviewer, former-librarian and author.

Jon Land is the USA Today bestselling author of more than 50 books, over ten of which feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. The critically acclaimed series has won more than a dozen awards, including the 2019 International Book Award for Best Thriller for Strong as Steel. He is also the author of Chasing the Dragon, a detailed account of the War on Drugs written with one of the most celebrated DEA agents of all time. A graduate of Brown University, Land lives in Providence, Rhode Island and received the 2019 Rhode Island Authors Legacy Award for his lifetime of literary achievements.

Jeff Ayers is the author of several books, including Voyages of Imagination. He has been a book reviewer for the Associated Press, Library Journal, and Booklist, and currently reviews for Criminal Element and firstCLUE. He is a retired public librarian and lives near Seattle, Washington.