Cold As Ice by Anne Stuart

Just when I'm ready to give up on suspense, Anne Stuart (who else?) changes my mind just a bit.

Cold As Ice by Anne Stuart
(2006, Suspense) 2/1/08
Grade: 4

Genevieve is hoping to deliver some papers to billionaire Harry Van Dorn and be on her way - but she finds herself in the way of Peter Jensen, an assassin from the Committee. At first Peter just finds Genevieve an annoyance, even though he’s reluctant to kill an innocent, but soon he finds himself intrigued despite his icy professionalism.

Surprisingly good. Although I don’t usually like suspense, the character of Peter Jensen made this book unique and worth reading. Although the “cold assassin” is a well known character, Stuart managed to humanize him without compromising who he was - he wasn’t a “warm and fuzzy guy who was misunderstood”. He did what he had to do, and I would have loved to know more about him. Genevieve was a good foil for him, although she was a more typical romance heroine - “fiesty”, sometimes in a foolhearty way, but she never came across as stupid. I got a little tired of the suspense plot in the last part of the book - it was well done, I just didn’t particularly care - but the characters kept me turning the pages.

I'm still not ready to run out and buy more suspense books - I'm not even that interested in other books in this series. But a great character can make me like a book that otherwise wouldn't appeal to me, and that's definitely the case here. Stuart gave me a wonderful, intriguing character in Peter, and unlike most suspense authors, she was willing to devote a huge amount of the book to character development rather than "running around". Unfortunately, that's rare.