Shea Collins is the protagonist of The Book of Cold Cases. Although during the day she works at a local doctor’s office, her vocation is her true crime blog, “The Book of Cold Cases,” “a collection of posts and articles written by [Shea] about unsolved crimes, the famous and the not so famous” (12). Shea briefly describes herself to the reader as “attractive enough, with long dark hair that I kept tied back, an oval face, and dark eyes. At the same time, I didn’t have the kind of good looks that threaten other women. I was standoffish—I knew that” (8). Her characteristic reserve mentioned here is the result of a narrowly escaped abduction when she was a child.

Shea’s life has been dramatically shaped by this attempted abduction when she was nine years old by a man who went on to kidnap, rape, and kill another girl, Sherry Haines, that very day after Shea escaped. Since then, she has lived her life by a series of rules, such as not riding in a car, even 20 years later. She has also lived with an enormous guilt that if she had only gone to her parents and the police earlier the other girl might not have died.