Dead of Winter
Seeking to outrun the ghosts of her past, Christa joins a tour group venturing deep into the snowy expanse of the Rocky Mountains. But when a catastrophic blizzard drives the group into an abandoned hunting cabin, their sanctuary quickly becomes a slaughterhouse. The nightmare begins when their guide is found decapitated in the snow—a gruesome warning that the danger isn’t just the cold. Trapped in claustrophobic isolation with eight strangers, Christa must identify the killer among them before the mountain becomes her grave.
- Kiernan - Christa’s boyfriend
- Christa - Kiernan’s girlfriend
- Hutch - DJ
- Brian - Bus driver
- Steve - Miri’s husband
- Miri - Steve’s wife
- Blake - Retired 911 dispatcher
- Simone - Former military
- Alexis - Young woman
- Denny - Mechanic, Grayson’s father
- Grayson - Denny’s son
- Liam - Kiernan’s brother, 19 when he died
- Janet - Alexis’s sister
- Christa and Kiernan are lost in the snow but get separated.
- Christa keeps walking and sees a cabin with a light on.
- Six hours earlier: Christa and Kiernan are on a bus with nine others headed to Blackstone Alpine Lodge.
- The bus stops because there is a log in the road that needs to be removed before they can continue.
- Kiernan and Christa walk off a bit to find a viewpoint.
- Now: Christa enters the cabin and finds everyone from the bus except Kiernan.
- When the bus got caught in the snow they tried to walk the rest of the way to the lodge but got lost.
- Brian leaves the cabin during the night and doesn’t return.
- In the morning, everyone searches for him and finds his head impaled on a tree branch.
- Miri then goes missing and is found beheaded.
- Simone leads a search party with Christa, Hutch, and Denny.
- They reach the road and find a headless body in Kiernan’s clothes lying there.
- The group finds nothing else and return to the cabin.
- Grayson goes for a walk and, when he doesn’t return, is found hanging upside down behind the cabin, headless.
- Two years earlier: Christa was driving one night when a car behind her drove erratically. Instead of backing off, she sped up as the car tried to pass, causing it to go off a bridge and killing the driver.
- Christa was never charged but she knew the truth; if she hadn’t sped up with the erratic driver, he would have lived.
- Alexis tells Christa about her sister, Janet who died by suicide last year, but Alexis believes it wasn’t suicide.
- The group is attacked in the middle of the night and Alexis gets gravely wounded.
- Christa, Denny and Steve find the cabin owners bodies in the shed.
- Christa climbs onto the roof to try for a cell signal and sees Blackstone Lodge in the distance, but the group thinks it’s too far to hike through the snow.
- Blake admits she once took a 911 call from a teen trapped in a car in a lake but thought it was a prank and hung up.
- The call was from Liam - the teen who drowned in the bridge incident two years earlier.
- Miri, Steve and Hutch were also there when the accident occurred.
- Simone, a rescue worker at the time, pulled Liam’s car out of the lake the next morning.
- Denny had worked on the truck Steve drove that night, and its failed emergency brake contributed to the crash.
- Everyone realizes they received their retreat tickets as gifts, meaning someone orchestrated this to avenge Liam.
- Simone and Steve leave the cabin and Christa follows and watches Simone kill Steve.
- They lock Simone in the shed.
- Christa goes to talk to Simone and finds her beheaded.
- Christa realizes neither Steve nor Simone are the killer.
- She returns to the cabin and finds Hutch is badly wounded.
- Denny shows up, holding an axe.
- Christa flees towards Blackstone Lodge and reaches it, followed by Denny.
- Christa finds a generator, restores power, and calls 911.
- Christa finds Denny’s decapitated head.
- Kiernan appears and explains everything to Christa:
- The headless body on the road in his clothes was Brian.
- Denny likely chased Christa because he thought she was the killer after seeing her standing over Hutch’s wounded body.
- Liam was Kiernan’s little brother.
- Liam’s death destroyed his mother and father so Kiernan has been getting revenge on everyone who was involved.
- Denny’s wife died because Kiernan had cut the brakes on Denny’s car, but she happened to drive it that day.
- Janet had argued with Liam the night he drove recklessly, so Kiernan blamed her as well and killed her, staging it as suicide.
- The plan was to kill everyone at the lodge, the bus getting stuck wasn’t planned.
- Kiernan killed the cabin owners a month prior to the trip.
- Kiernan killed Alexis because she wouldn’t stop investigating Janet’s death.
- Brian and Grayson were simply collateral damage.
- Christa slices at Kiernan’s throat with a knife and then she hears sirens in the distance.
- We are left wondering if Kiernan will live to face charges and if Alexis and Hutch are still alive.
Dead of Winter is a solid survival thriller that keeps you engaged, even if the mystery itself is a bit transparent. The setup is classic—strangers trapped in a remote cabin during a blizzard—and the claustrophobic atmosphere is wonderful. The tension between the survivors is high, creating a medium-paced paranoia that kept me reading just to see who would snap first.
That said, I was able to guess the identity of the killer very early on, though the different twists did have me questioning myself a few times throughout. Overall, a fun, tense read for a winter night, but the predictability knocks it down a star for me.
- Brian - Dead - Killed by Kiernan
- Miri - Dead - Killed by Kiernan
- Kiernan - Unknown - His fate is unclear after Christa cuts his throat
- Grayson - Dead - Killed by Kiernan
- Steve - Dead - Bludgeoned by Simone
- Alexis - Unknown - Last seen in critical condition in the cabin
- Simone - Dead - Killed by Kiernan
- Blake - Dead - Killed by Kiernan
- Hutch - Unknown - Last seen in critical condition in the cabin
- Denny - Dead - Killed by Kiernan
- Janet - Dead - Killed by Kiernan
- Christa - Alive - Desperate to find out whether Alexis and Hutch survived
- Murder
- Mutilation of a corpse
Ambiguous
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
ISBN: 9781728270258
Publication Date: July 11, 2023
Note: Details are for the original edition. Other formats, editions, and audiobook versions may be available.
