COLD FURY by T.M. Goeglein

Cold Fury
T.M. Goeglein

Rating: B
Release Date: 07/24/12
Synopsis from goodreads.com:
Jason Bourne meets The Sopranos in this breathtaking adventure

Sara Jane Rispoli is a normal sixteen-year-old coping with school and a budding romance--until her parents and brother are kidnapped and she discovers her family is deeply embedded in the Chicago Outfit (aka the mob).

Now on the run from a masked assassin, rogue cops and her turncoat uncle, Sara Jane is chased and attacked at every turn, fighting back with cold fury as she searches for her family. It's a quest that takes her through concealed doors and forgotten speakeasies--a city hiding in plain sight. Though armed with a .45 and 96K in cash, an old tattered notebook might be her best defense--hidden in its pages the secret to "ultimate power." It's why she's being pursued, why her family was taken, and could be the key to saving all of their lives.

Action packed, with fresh, cinematic writing, Cold Fury is a riveting and imaginative adventure readers will devour.


My thoughts on the book:
Anyone who wants to read from the perspective of a smart, tough, mature heroine needs to pick up Cold Fury as soon as possible. While Sara Jane's name may cause you to think that she came straight from Little House on the Prairie, her strength and resourcefulness will quickly end that notion. While there were some dialogue and pacing issues within this novel, Cold Fury is full of action and suspense. It will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page. You don't want to miss this one!


I'm going to start with the very few things that I don't like and then tell you about the many things that I do like about this book. The dialogue was a bit ridiculous and cheesy at times. It seems like Goeglein has watched gangster movies too many times and now thinks that anyone who lives in the general proximity of the mob will talk like a 1920s thug. I lived in Chicago for many years, and hope to return there once I get my BA, and I have never heard anyone my age or younger refer to someone else as a "knucklehead." I mean some of the dialect in the midwest is a bit archaic, but not that archaic. Also, the use of "pinhead" threw me a bit. That is yet another phrase I never heard uttered in the Chicagoland area. I'm 99.9% sure that no teenagers really say those words. Having the teenagers say those words kind of makes everyone in Chicago seem like they should be wearing fedoras and running from the "coppers" or something. It's pretty comical, so I laughed at some inopportune times because of that. Anyway, other than the dialogue, the pacing was a bit slow. It seemed to take a little longer than it should to get from one important point to the next. Those two issues aside, I loved this book. 


Sara Jane is the strongest heroine I've ever read in an adult novel, AND she's a Cubs fan. She doesn't waste time taking care of what needs to be done, and she certainly doesn't spend her time pining after some boy. Sure, there are romantic interests in this book, but she barely has time to worry with them. Instead, she takes care of things that need to be done in order to find her family. She's loyal to her friends and puts her family first. The girl obviously has her priorities straight. And where a lot of YA heroines would have broken down, cried, and waited on some knight in shining armor type to save them, Sara Jane squares her shoulders and carries on. And guess what, when she meets a hot guy, she doesn't go crying to him about her problems. She keeps them to herself and does what she has to do. She even *gasp* turns down dates! It's a miracle in YA literature that a female would EVER turn down a date. Because of her independence (and the fact that she's a Cubs fan), I think she is the perfect YA heroine. There isn't a lot of secondary character involvement quite yet, but my favorite is Tyler. I hope to see more of him in the sequel. 

I did love Sara Jane, but I think my favorite thing about this novel is that it feels like Chicago. Sara Jane's attitude and the way she interacts with the people around her, combined with the landscape painting that Goeglein does, made Cold Fury feel like home to me... which inevitably made me incredibly homesick. However, that Chicagoland feeling is part of what made me love this novel so much. It really does encompass all that is beautiful and terrible about the city. I hope the sequel has more of the same feel to it. 

Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys suspenseful novels with a touch of the supernatural. I'd also recommend it to people who love Chicago or would like to visit the city one day, as well as people who enjoy mob and prohibition-era history. Regardless of your interests, Cold Fury has something for everyone. Give this book a try, you won't be disappointed!

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