Ice Angel

Mysterious Book Report No. 469

by John Dwaine McKenna

 

Despite it’s dumb-assed title, Ice Angel, (Pegasus Crime, $25.95, 272 pages, ISBN 970-1-64313-811-4) by Matthew Hart, is a cool piece of crime fiction that has an exciting premise, a dynamic, fast-moving plot and an interesting cast of characters—all of whom are trying to rob, swindle, outwit and kill each other somewhere north of the Arctic circle in the Canadian wilderness . . . where one of the world’s greatest diamond fields has been discovered.  It’s an area teeming with oil, timber and minerals that are just waiting to be exploited.

The yarn begins with the disappearance of a legendary diamond prospector and ethically challenged stock market operator named Jimmy Angel.  He’s rumored to be sitting on an epic find, one of the richest diamond pipes ever discovered.  Then he’s gone.  That’s when a pair of Chinese billionaires—a playboy named Fan and his calculating twin sister  Mei, who have ties to China’s government and it’s military—step in with a dubious maneuver  to take over the missing diamond hunter’s entire business and all of it’s staked claims for leases.  Because Angel is an American citizen who’s already a subject of interest to the U.S. government, treasury agent Alex Turner is sent to find out what’s happened to the missing  man.  Turner’s accompanied by his treacherous lover, a Russian diamond thief named Slav Lily, who may in fact be colluding with the enemy.  With the takeover of the Angel Companies, higher-ups in Washington, D.C. fear that the Chinese Communist Government is trying to establish a land base on the North American Continent . . . something they want to prevent at all costs.  And, when Angel’s daughter Mitzi enters the plot, all-out mayhem ensues with airplane chases, machine gun fights and a never-ending assortment of vicious thugs combined with lyrical prose and savage Arctic weather conditions all make this an electrifying hard-to-put-down read that will keep you guessing to the end!

 

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