The Book of Cold Cases, written by Simone St. James, was published in 2022 by Berkeley. St. James is the author of seven other novels and a New York Times and USA Today bestseller for The Sun Down Motel and The Broken Girls. Before its publication, The Book of Cold Cases was nominated as a Most Anticipated Novel by Goodreads and PopSugar. St. James spent 20 years in television before making the leap to fiction writing, publishing her first book in 2012. Her novel, The Sun Down Motel, has reportedly been optioned for adaptation into a television series, according to the author.

This study guide refers to the eBook edition, published in 2022 by Berkeley.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature discussion of murder, rape, child abduction, and mass shootings.

Plot Summary

The Book of Cold Cases is composed of two narrative threads that twine together: Shea’s story, which takes place in 2017; and Beth’s story, which begins in 1960 and continues through to 2017. These narratives are bookended by the opening and closing chapters, told by an anonymous third person narrator, that focus on the perspective of the Greer mansion itself.

The protagonist, Shea Collins, is working as a doctor’s office receptionist when she recognizes a patient in the waiting room. She realizes that the woman, Beth Greer, is infamous for having been tried and acquitted in 1977 for a series of crimes that came to be known as the Lady Killer murders. Shea, who writes a true crime blog, asks Beth if she can interview her, and to her surprise Beth says yes. Shea lives a quiet life, with rules that she has kept in place since she was nine years old and narrowly escaped being abducted. She lives alone, is recently divorced, and spends all of her time researching and writing for her blog. She occasionally hires Michael De Vos, a local private investigator and former cop, to help her but has never met him in person.

As Shea is interviewing Beth and investigating her story in 2017, the narrative switches to Beth’s story, which spans time from 1960, when she is just six years old, to the present. Beth grew up lonely and isolated—her parents, Julian and Mariana, were distant and had a difficult marriage, and her wealth kept her apart from her peers. However, when she is six, a girl named Lily Knowles appears at her house, and returns to visit every Christmas. Beth realizes, over time, that Lily is her sister, Mariana’s daughter from a time before her marriage. Lily’s appearance has a disastrous effect on the already unstable Greer family, affecting Mariana and Julian’s marriage most of all. Beth recognizes that there is something not right about Lily, that she is cold and cruel, but remains close to her in spite of this. When Beth is 16, her parents take her to a Christmas party to set her up with a local boy, a connection they hope will lead to marriage. When Beth gets home, she writes to Lily, telling her of her parents’ plan. Soon after, Julian is shot and killed in their kitchen, an apparent home invasion, but Beth knows immediately that it was Lily who shot him. Just two years later, Mariana dies in a car accident, and Lily disappears, as she often does for periods of time.

A few years later, a man is shot in the face by the side of the road in Claire Lake, with a note left by the killer. Beth knows immediately that Lily did it. She drives around at night trying to find Lily and one night hears gunshots. She finds another man, shot by the side of the road, and sees Lily’s car leaving the scene. Soon after, the police interview Beth in connection to the murders. A witness saw a woman matching Beth’s description leaving the scene of the second murder, and the police accuse and arrest her for the murders. Eventually, Beth is acquitted of the murders and released. When she gets home, Lily has returned and tells Beth that she is moving in. Beth realizes that Lily is going to continue killing, so she hits her with a heavy glass ashtray and then drowns her in the bathtub. She buries Lily’s body near Claire Lake and remains in the Greer mansion for the rest of her life, as the ghost of Lily will not let her leave or change anything about the house.

While Beth is revealing the truth of her story, Shea is working through her own trauma, which has resulted in disconnection from her sister and an isolated life. She acquires a cat, reconnects with her sister, and even develops a relationship with Michael, but she is drawn to Beth’s story and to discovering the truth about the haunted Greer mansion. When she returns to the Greer mansion alone, Lily’s ghost lures her to the cliff overlooking the ocean behind the house and pushes her over the edge. Shea manages to get to safety but ends up in the hospital. Michael and her sister are both there to support her. Several months later, as she is still recuperating from the injuries from her fall, Shea hears about the death of Beth Greer in a car accident. Authorities suspect that a stroke was the cause, but Shea knows that Beth had a brain aneurysm and that was most likely the cause of her death. She sees Beth’s death as a way for the woman to finally escape.