THE ICE MAIDEN by Edna Buchanan

I'll grant you this was a page-turner, but in the end it was somewhat predictable and not very satisfying. Britt Montero is a Miami crime news reporter who stumbles onto a possible key to an old murder case. Two teenagers, a boy (Ricky) and a girl (Sunny), were beaten, shot, and left for dead. Sunny crawled to help and survived. She's the Ice Maiden of the title, as she has become an artist and is creating an ice sculpture when Britt meets her. Meanwhile, Britt has personal problems of her own, since the head of the Cold Case Squad has apparently stolen her boyfriend and has put the quietus on her staff's pursuit of Ricky's murderers. I think this rivalry could have made for a juicier subplot, but it's really very tangential. Other red herrings include the bumping off of an informant that is ultimately a random act of violence. So why put it in there at all? Then there's a subplot that seems superfluous but isn't, in which a friend's violent husband has been released from prison early.