Anne Stuart, Black Ice

Anne Stuart, Black Ice - Chloe Underwood left the North Carolina Mountains to live in Paris. She scored work as a translator of children's books at Les Frere Laurent due to her promiscuous roommate Sylvia Whickham. When Sylvia has a chance to spend the weekend with wealthy, sixty-seven-year-old Henry, she coaxes Chloe to replace her in translating English to and from French.

Chloe arrives at Mirabel, which has security tighter than Fort Knox has. At the locale, Mr. Hakim leans towards sending Chloe home and several participants object to her presence, speaking in Italian to hide what they say about her from her; the translator understands perfectly what they communicate, but pretends otherwise. When her clients learn that Chloe has found out that they are arms dealers, they must kill her. Her only hope of survival is one of the attendees, Bastien Toussaint, a man with at least a dozen identities. Compromising his undercover mission that he has played at for eleven months, he flees with Chloe, but she wonders if she is safe with him as she knows her heart is not.

Though why Chloe insisted on staying when her employer stated he did not need her seems off, readers will obtain plenty of pleasure from this taut, romantic suspense thriller. The storyline moves quickly once Chloe chooses to hide her ability to speak and comprehend Italian and never slows down until the climatic battle between Mr. Hakim's thugs and the heroine and her antiheroic champion. BLACK ICE is a tremendous thriller that showcases the skills of an author worth reading.

Mira, May 2005, $6.99, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0778321711

Harriet Klausner