The Cold Song may be centred around a murder, but it is most certainly not about one. Milla, the murdered girl, is a victim only to Ullman's writing. How Ullman trusses Milla up in the ties that bind the lives of this town, ties that become tenuous, fraught with everyday frustrations - husbands that cheat but who still love, daughters that yell 'fuck you, mama', mothers that drink, and so the list goes on; and so the ties tighten, the reader is on the ropes now. And so Milla dies; the ties snap soon enough, how come she is the one attenuated with scars? Curious are the tensions that surround this spellbound town, and haunt the reader in the best way.