Steve Cline has managed the hunter/jumper show barns at Foxdale Farm for the better part of three years. But he has a deal with himself: When he no longer feels challenged, when the routine becomes stagnant, he will look for another job...and he passed that point months ago. So when Corey Claremont, one of Foxdale's boarders, asks Steve for help because her brother has gone missing, Steve embraces the puzzle with enthusiasm.

Two weeks earlier, for no apparent reason, Bruce Claremont quit his job working the night shift on a thoroughbred breeding farm in Warrenton, Virginia, and vanished. To find out what happened, Steve slips unobtrusively into Bruce’s world.

The more Steve learns, the more he suspects that Corey may never see her brother again. Secrets, jealousies, and obsessions are the norm in this pastoral setting, and the present seems to be repeating its fiery past.

Reviews

Foul play among the thoroughbreds brings Ehrman's young Lochinvar riding to the rescue once more.

Steve Cline, hero of Ehrman's horse-whodunits (Dead Man's Touch, 2003, etc.), rarely saddles up, but that doesn't mean he lacks for derring-do. Show Steve a damsel in distress, and he's off to the races. The damsel this time is sweet Corey Claremont, a client at Maryland's Foxdale Farm, where Steve is barn manager. Corey's brother has gone lost, strayed, or stolen. Will Steve place his famous investigative powers, his well-known resourcefulness, and his night-errantry in her service and please find out

which? Of course. Off he goes undercover, signing on for the nightshift at Stone Manor, the breeding farm in Warrenton, Virginia, where Bruce Claremont was last seen. There, he meets elegant, troubled Dr. Deirdre Nash, who owns the place, and saucy, bouncy Maddie O'Connell, expert midwife to anything equine and indefatigable temptress to anything in pants. He meets the motley collection of men who lust after them and does all the lusting proper to a 20-year-old hero himself, though never at the expense of his knightly mission. As for Bruce, it turns out there are darker aspects to the Claremont gene pool than Corey ever imagined.

While gallant Steve isn't always believable, he's increasingly irresistible in Ehrman's best yet. -- Kirkus Reviews

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The nitty-gritty grunt work that takes place off the race track, and out of sight in the horse barns where mares are bred and foaled, is the backdrop for Ehrman's absorbing third mystery to feature Steve Cline, a bright and observant young barn manager (after 2003's Dead Man's Touch). At the behest

of his friend Corey Claremont, Cline takes a job on Virginia's Stone Manor Farm to look into the disappearance of Corey's brother, Bruce, who quit his

job abruptly. Like Bruce, Steve is assigned the grueling "foal watch" night shift. His search for clues to the whereabouts of his missing predecessor

begins at the farm and spreads far afield, leading him to investigate arson, murder and drug-dealing while he fends off dangers from a variety of

sources. Suspicion points toward a bullying stable worker but also toward a jealous co-worker-and later to one of the farm's two owners and then to the

other. Steve demonstrates more grit than deductive powers and more sense about the horses he cares for than the women crowding his life, but he has a

pleasing honesty. Ehrman's knowledge and exposition of life on a horse farm is most impressive and enjoyable. FORECAST: A blurb from Rita Mae Brown, an enthusiastic horsewoman who lives in Virginia, will help attract cozy fans who might overlook this one. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (2005-01-10)

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"Open a Kit Ehrman book for a whiff of fresh hay and old manure and hot sweat, all mingled with deception and danger and death. Ehrman's got the world of horses and horse people nailed. It's easy and obvious to compare COLD BURN -- favorably -- with a Dick Francis novel, but if you ask me, no comparisons are needed. Kit Ehrman is a terrific storyteller in her own right." --William G. Tapply, author of BITCH CREEK