Cold Case

Cold Case is a novel by the American writer Kate Wilhelm, published in 2008. It is one of her books about the Oregon attorney Barbara Holloway.

Barbara Holloway is a defence attorney with no strong evidence to rely on, and what she has instead is her instinct for a case. In this one, if her instincts cannot take her to the truth, her client will lose his life.

The man she is defending is David Etheridge, a controversial author and scholar whose company an aspiring politician would rather not keep. The politician is State Senator Robert McCrutchen, and he has a history with Etheridge that he has been working hard to keep out of sight.

Twenty-two years earlier, while the two of them were at the University of Oregon, both men were investigated in the death of a young woman, and the case was never solved. A circle of secrecy saw to that at the time, and now the old stories have started coming to the surface again, because Etheridge has returned to Eugene. What Barbara finds as she works is that her own life is on the line as well.