Die Cold

Jake Boulder is working as a bartender, at an exclusive Vermont ski resort on New Year’s Eve, when armed terrorists hold up the lodge and take all the customers and guests hostage.

Trapped with the other hostages, Boulder watches in horror as the female terrorist leader disfigures a singer to make her point. He wants to fight back, but is unarmed and being held at gunpoint.

Boulder finds a way to escape from the terrorists and searches for a way to raise the alarm. After he discovers the terrorists’ plan to leave no witnesses to their crime, he knows he has a race against time to save as many innocent people as he can…

But will Boulder be the reluctant hero and save the day?

"Die Cold is a story that will certainly grab you by the throat and send you hurtling at full speed through it. An absolute page turner of a read that will have the adrenaline coursing through your veins. Not sure how the author keeps managing to top the last but each one is as effortlessly brilliant as the last one. " By The Letter Book Reviews

"This is a totally action packed thriller from Mr Smith. He takes Jake to a different level to test his skill, wits and nerve. " A Knights Reads

"OMG.....And Jake is back....I cant find words to rate this book highly enough.Its brutal from the start...and the pace is relentless. I read it in one sitting as there were nowhere to take a break.My heart was pounding with fear and the amount of "O God" says it all really. Another excellent story from this amazing author. " Amazon Reviewer 

 I have read all four books in this series . They just get better and better . Looking forward to many more . Highly recommended to anyone who likes a good thriller." Amazon Reviewer

"I loved this story!! It was fast paced, full of excitement and has the best lead character in the rough and ready Jake Boulder!!" Amazon Reviewer

"Smith artfully juxtaposes the ice cold surroundings and the obstacles it throws up for Jake with the fire and heat of the fast paced, action-led, hurtling adrenaline rush that propels the narrative forward at a rate of knots. " Liz Mistry

"Die Cold for me was a completely different read from the other Jake Boulder books; there was something much more measured about Jake this time around but conversely with that came a greater feeling of menace. His grief and guilt have made him a much colder character in this book. Yet his vulnerability still manages to shine through that tough exterior, that conflict he has going on within himself, it all works to make him a rounded character.  The pace was fast fast fast! Action packed from the start to the finish, almost James Bond-like..."  - Chapter in my Life

"Die Cold is a brilliantly freezing and addictive read that is not to be confused with an all-action-big-muscle-dull-characters fiction. Gripping and spot-on, it offers a heart-stopping look at what it takes to fight the big evil. One man against many. I cannot wait to meet Jake again." Chocolate n Waffles

Die Cold has perhaps the strangest story of all my novels regarding its origins. At the start of each of the previous Jake Boulder novels I had included a historical quote that was relevant to the story, and I had a quote I wanted use.

I’ve always loved Groucho Marx for his acerbic wit and the quote of his I wanted to use was the words he’d spoken to a host of a dinner party he’d attended, “I’ve had a lovely evening, but this wasn’t it.”

As great as the quote is, it’s also very limiting. To write a novel to fit that quote, I’d have to have the entire story take place in one night at most.

All of my previous novels took place over several days, there was travel time to factor in as leads were pursued and people interviewed. None of these things can happen in a short space of time, yet time would be at a premium if I was to set a novel in a single night.

To cut anything from the novel that would take a lot of story time would also mean that I had to restrict the setting as travel is a big user of time. It would also mean I had to speed up the investigative aspects of the story, cutting out unhelpful interviews while still having a mystery for Jake to solve.

After a period of casting various ideas aside, I realised what I’d been missing. It was the obvious. It’s well documented on my social media feeds that Die Hard is my favourite film (Yes it’s a Christmas movie, and yes, I plan to write a somewhat lengthy deconstruction of its brilliance one day).

For those not in the know, Die Hard takes place in a single evening and has a hero saving the day when terrorists take over a building.

The basic structure of Die Hard had everything I needed, a hero role to be fulfilled, a closed location for the hero to operate in, bad guys to defeat, a short timeline, innocent civilians at risk and the opporchancity to watch a brilliant movie and call it research.

Naturally, I couldn’t just rip off Die Hard. That would be sacrilege. Regardless of what my readers thought, if I was to use the framework of Die Hard for my own story, I had to do so in a way that paid homage; that showed influences divined from, rather than outright plagiarism.

I moved the setting from the centre of a city to an isolated mountaintop, changed the date from Christmas to New Year and made a lot of other small alterations to make sure it didn’t end up as a straightforward reworking. I did though pay what I felt were respectful nods to what I feel is the greatest action movie ever made.

As a project to write, it was perhaps the fastest paced novel I’ve ever written and once I got going on it, the story flowed from my fingertips at one heck of a pace that I hope has made its way into the story. 

You wonderful readers are the only ones who can answer that.