Ice series / Anne Stuart

How do you like your heroes? If you like them morally ambiguous, deadly and taciturn, you may want to give the Ice series by Anne Stuart a whirl. Stuart has been at her craft for 35 years — she holds a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Romance Writers of American — and her experience is evident in the sure hand she wields when it comes to the characters, pacing and conflict in these romantic suspense stories.



The Ice series is composed of six novels so far:

1. Black Ice
2. Cold As ice
3. Ice Blue
4. Ice Storm
5. Fire And Ice
6. On Thin Ice

A heads-up if you're one of those people who has to read a series from the beginning: Here at Moore Library, we've got No. 2-5 in the series. So I haven't read the first one, Black Ice, or the most recent one, Thin Ice, which is actually only available through Amazon in their Kindle ebook format. (Next month it will come out as an audiobook.) But rest assured that these books can easily be read as standalones; Stuart provides you with what you need to know in each one and doesn't leave you wondering what's going on or who's who.

The Ice series revolves around the flinty-hearted operatives of The Committee, a shadowy international organization that fights terrorism with a ruthless, ends-justify-the-means mentality. Stuart uses a similar storyline in each: An agent on a mission from the Committee finds his (or her) plans inextricably linked to another person, typically a civilian who's in the wrong place at the wrong time. The operation goes awry, and the two are forced to go on the run together. Literal and figurative pyrotechnics ensue.

Yes, it's formulaic, but Stuart knows how to mix it up just enough to provide readers a pleasing combination of familiarity and variety.

As Stuart says herself in the video above, she's not for everyone, but if she is, she works really well. I think that's quite true. The spooks in the Ice stories aren't the gallant knights-in-white-armor types. They're stone-cold killers who often expend a great deal of energy debating whether or not to off the person they're corralled with, seeing them initially as an annoyance and liability. And when they're not in killer mode, the men in particular, they're usually cranky, mean and mocking.

But Stuart makes it work. She uses that dissonance between the two protagonists to create heat and tension. As their humanity is revealed, the male characters grow on you, as they do the the main female characters. Their crazy courtships, if you can call them that, play out amidst a backdrop of exotic locales, life-or-death situations and nefarious villains.

Nor is it the men who always save the day. One of series' main characters is a female Committee operative with formidable skills herself. But it's the relationship between the two main characters that serve as the heart of the story. And given that these are romantic suspense stories, there's never really any doubt how the end will play out. But Stuart, if she's to your taste, makes the journey worth it.

Check out this video to hear from Stuart herself on the series' conception:

Smiley's People / by John Le Carré

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John Le Carré is the pen name for David John Moore Cornwell, a former operative in the MI5 and MI6 departments of the British secret service who's been a full-time author of espionage novels for several decades. Le Carre's 1963 novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was an international best-seller and established the author as a luminary new talent in spy fiction. Numerous other successes would follow in later years. Among his all-time most popular works are those comprising "The Karla Trilogy" which document the pursuit of a rival Soviet agent, code name "Karla". Smiley's People (1979), the final book in the series, is a shining example of Le Carré at his best.

"Do you know why they call Karla 'The Sandman'? He has a way of putting to sleep whoever gets close to him."

George Smiley has effectually been "retired off" from his job with the British secret service department known as "The Circus" after an incident in which a rogue agent working under him, a mole, was caught leaking information to the enemy. But when an old friend and former allied agent Vladimir (code name "The General") desperately relays a message to special branch requesting a private rendezvous, The Circus has no choice but to recall George immediately. Though necessary precautions are taken by both parties to ensure confidentiality, Vladimir never makes the appointment and is later found dead, having been shot in the face at close range with no detectable details, clues or culprits. The Circus promptly dismisses the incident as a lost cause, politely insinuating that with Vladimir having been out of the loop so long, nothing of consequence could have been extracted from the former Soviet defector.

But Smiley knows his hold friend well, just as he himself has always known a great deal more than he ever lets on. He knows Vladimir wouldn't ruffle any feathers unless something were of the utmost importance. With a little snooping around and a few visits to some old friends, George is soon able to retrieve the message Vladimir was trying to relay, information which swiftly gets the attention of the bullish heads at the Circus and promptly re-immerses George into the murky realm of undercover operations. It's a world where casual, often dubious acquaintances hold the key to revelations and critical intelligence maneuvers are required by a man in the know, a man like George Smiley, a man who, ironically, now feels far more at home than he ever could in retirement. Swiftly taking the evidence left him by Vladimir and applying it to his own well-networked system of people and information, George proceeds through an intricate sequence of interconnected events, slowly becoming wise to the slippery trail of the ever-elusive Soviet super spy "Karla", the most instrumental USSR agent in the history of the Cold War.

James Bond, Jason Bourne and Jack Ryan have nothing, repeat nothing on George Smiley. Likewise for their respective creators (Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy), whose ultra-glamourized, ever-romanticized concept of authentic intelligence barely gets past fancy gadgets and expensive apparel and could never compare to the fastidious, sveltly polished work of Le Carré. Smiley's People almost makes you wish the Cold War were still on. The material, while initially complex and extensive, becomes so mentally intriguing that the reader can't help but be engrossed by the structure of the story. And it achieves this absent of any explosive action sequences. The passive mannerisms, contemplative nature and deftly executed procedures of George Smiley--a figure the very antithesis of flashy cool; he's an old, unappealing, slow-speaking reject--offer a well-developed, uniquely alluring character who may seem solitary but could never be deemed a romantic "lone wolf" type as he must rely on, who else, his "people" for everything. The irreplaceable Alec Guinness stars as Smiley in the BBC's 1982 miniseries which took home 4 Emmy's and was nominated for 6 others.

Tsar by Ted Bell

Alex Hawke, a modern-day James Bond who also happens to be a British Lord, is perfectly content in his quiet, secluded, slow-paced hideaway in Bermuda. A former first-class counter-terrorist , he is slowly recovering from the physical and psychological wounds he suffered at the hands of sadistic terrorists and has withdrawn from the world. But he is soon drawn back into his crucial role of global protector by the ruthless plans of a resurgent and threatening Russia, determined to “reintegrate” former territories and to blackmail the world with its huge oil supplies. Insidious technical inventions, global greed and diabolical genius make this book a nail-biting read!Shockingly current with an unsettling picture of our near future!