Quick Take
- Narration: Abby Craden brings sharp differentiation to both leads, giving Jake a wry toughness and Nicole a restrained vulnerability that keeps the romantic tension plausible.
- Themes: Identity and the professional closet, desire versus duty, trauma and recovery
- Mood: Atmospheric and slow-burning with bursts of sharp suspense
- Verdict: A confident dual-genre listen that earns its romance and its mystery in roughly equal measure.
I have a specific weakness for crime novels set against dramatic landscapes, and Gerri Hill’s Colorado mountains deliver exactly the kind of physical remoteness that makes isolation feel earned rather than convenient. I started The Killing Room on a Tuesday evening expecting a quick genre listen and found myself still in it well past midnight, mostly because Abby Craden’s narration makes the transition between the mountain prologue and the Denver procedural feel genuinely seamless rather than like two books awkwardly stitched together.
The premise is lean and confident. Detective Jake McCoy, recovering from a shooting that left her physically injured and emotionally wrecked by the death of a child she could not save, retreats to her mountain cabin. She is hiking the natural springs when she encounters Nicole Westbrook, a psychologist on a solo vacation who is, somewhat improbably, lost. What follows over the course of one day and one night is a connection that both women recognize as something more than a fling, though they part without exchanging last names. When Jake returns to Denver and catches a serial murder case, the investigation leads her directly to Nicole, whose professional life requires a closet that Jake, as an openly gay cop, simply does not inhabit. Hill published this originally in 2006, and some of the professional attitudes toward sexuality read as artifacts of that period. One long-term reviewer who revisited it in 2024 noted exactly this, flagging it as a gem with a specific cultural timestamp. That is accurate and worth knowing before you start.
Our Take on The Killing Room
What Hill does well, and what Craden executes with real skill, is keep the romantic and procedural threads under equal tension without letting either one resolve too easily. The serial murder investigation is not decoration around a love story, and the romance is not a distraction from the case. Jake’s injury and the psychological weight of the boy’s death are present throughout, not as backstory but as an active force shaping her decisions and her emotional availability. Nicole’s closet is similarly specific and consequential: it is not just a conflict device but a portrait of what professional survival required for a certain generation of women in certain institutional environments. The tension between Jake’s openness and Nicole’s concealment carries real stakes that Hill does not resolve with a tidy epiphany.
Why Listen to The Killing Room
Abby Craden is the primary reason this works as an audiobook. Craden handles both the procedural sections, which require a kind of efficient forward momentum, and the more interior romantic passages with strong tonal command. She voices Jake with a wry, guarded warmth that keeps the character sympathetic even when she is making professionally questionable choices. Nicole’s interiority, her discomfort in her own professional skin, lands with a believable quietness rather than performed anxiety. One reviewer described the sexual tension between the two women as something you could practically feel in the air without it feeling forced or phony. Craden achieves that partly by underplaying: the restraint in the romantic scenes does more work than dramatization would.
What to Watch For in The Killing Room
The mystery plot is solid but not labyrinthine. Hill is more interested in character and atmosphere than in elaborate procedural misdirection, which means experienced crime listeners may find the investigation relatively straightforward. One reviewer admitted to being convinced they knew the culprit until the final reveal, which suggests Hill is doing something right in managing reader expectations, even if the solution is not intricate. The pacing slows considerably in the middle section as Hill develops the romantic strand, and listeners primarily in it for the thriller elements may find that stretch long. The Colorado landscape descriptions, rendered vividly by Craden, carry much of that middle section.
Who Should Listen to The Killing Room
Readers who enjoy F/F romance with genuine procedural weight will find this a strong fit. Listeners who want a mystery that keeps both its leads’ interior lives as central as the crime itself will get that here. Those looking primarily for an intricate whodunit with a complex mystery structure may want to set expectations accordingly. The book’s 2006 cultural context around professional closeting is also worth noting for listeners sensitive to period-specific attitudes about sexuality in institutional settings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does The Killing Room work as a standalone, or do you need to know the characters from Gerri Hill’s other books?
It functions as a complete standalone. Jake McCoy and Nicole Westbrook are introduced from scratch, and the story resolves fully within this audiobook. No prior familiarity with Hill’s other work is needed.
How explicit is the romantic content in this audiobook?
The romance includes explicit sexual scenes, most notably the hot springs encounter early in the book. Listeners comfortable with adult content in lesbian romance fiction will find it in keeping with the genre. Those looking for entirely closed-door romance may want to consider that before starting.
Does Abby Craden differentiate the two lead characters clearly in narration?
Yes. Craden gives Jake a warmer, slightly more sardonic register and Nicole a more guarded, measured delivery. The distinction holds throughout and makes it easy to follow interior perspective shifts without confusion.
The book was originally published in 2006. Does it feel dated in the audiobook format?
The 2019 Tantor Audio release does not update the source material, so attitudes around professional closeting and institutional norms for gay professionals read as specific to the mid-2000s. For some listeners this is part of the book’s character; for others it may require some historical recalibration while listening.
