Anne Stuart, Ice Blue

Ice Blue

Anne Stuart

Mira, Apr 2007, $6.99

ISBN: 0778324788

A world wide holy war seems imminent. However, the final catalyst is a not a terrorist, but instead is museum curator Summer Hawthorne. Her fifteen minutes of fame began with a beautiful present from her beloved nanny as the road to hell begins for her. Now she has information that if it goes public will ignite the globe as never seen before.

Top secret agent Takashi O'Brien is the prime operative to prevent such a calamity from occurring. He is told to do whatever it takes to avert the war even if that means killing Summer so that her knowledge dies with her. He is perfect for the assignment as he lacks a conscience and no one has a colder heart than he, not even the Grinch. Yet for some reason that he does not comprehend, he cannot kill Summer though he has her at his mercy. Instead Takashi discovers he has a heart as he risks his life and his assignment to protect the innocent curator while falling in love with her. Still he knows the easy solution is to kill her to prevent a maniac from tapping her brain as part of a scheme to ignite a global tsunami that will leave billions dead.

Though ICE BLUE may seem simple, this is a complex, somewhat overly complicated, twisting, romantic, suspense thriller that uses the premise of an innocent person caught up in larger-than-life issues not of her making (sort of like what happens to Thornhill in Hitchcock's North by Northwest). The storyline is non-stop action, but it is the relationship between the agent and the curator that brings depth to the tale as he knows she is a superfluous statistic except in his heart.

Harriet Klausner