FernFolio

Worried and hurt when her boyfriend Nick takes off without a word to anyone, Robyn Hunter decides, after some fruitless searching, that she needs to find a new preoccupation in life.  Her friend Billy, a dedicated do-gooder, suggests that she volunteer at a local drop-in centre for homeless people and so Robyn finds herself helping out in the kitchen there, baking thirty-six dozen cookies on her first day.  At the centre, Robyn meets the director, Mr. Donovan, Betty, the cook, and some of the centre’s clients, including the sweet and shy Andrew and the rather scary Mr. Duffy.  She also meets Ben, another volunteer, who takes one look at her new boots and her expensive coat and sneeringly labels her a two-four, a twenty-four hour wonder who turns up once to get in some community service hours or as a sop to their conscience at Christmas.
Goaded by Ben’s attitude and unable to say no to Billy or Mr. Donovan, Robyn finds herself returning to the drop-in centre to help with their Christmas preparations.  She wins the cautious approval of Ben, only to lose it again after she is attacked by a client intent upon taking food from the kitchen’s storeroom and reports the assault to the police, which results in the man being barred from the drop-in centre just as the weather turns very cold.  Tragedy strikes when the man freezes to death in an empty alley.
Though her friends and parents tell her that it is not her fault, Robyn is convinced that, by speaking to the police, she is responsible for the homeless man’s death.  Looking for a concrete way to deal with her guilt and grief, she approaches the contemptuous Ben, who informs her that he wants to hold a memorial service for the dead man, but that no one seems to have known much about him.  Assigned the job of learning who this man was, Robyn interviews clients at the drop-in centre, haunts the man’s regular spot outside a downtown office building, and makes the acquaintance of someone who just might hold the clues to his identity.  In the process, Robyn discovers far more about both the dead man, the clients and volunteers at the drop-in centre, and the problem of homelessness than she could have ever anticipated.
The fourth in Norah McClintock’s Robyn Hunter mysteries, Out of the Cold is a suspenseful and fast-paced adventure, that will keep the reader engaged to the final, and unexpected, revelation.
Out of the Cold won the 2009 Red Maple Fiction prize.
FernFolio Editor