Book review: New Alex Turner thriller complex and compelling

"Ice Angel"

Author: Matthew Hart

Pegasus Crime, 274 pages, $25.95

Award-winning "Diamond" and "Gold" journalist Matthew Hart heads into the Canadian Arctic wastelands in his latest thriller featuring Alex Turner, high-flying former C.I.A. agent, now U.S. Treasury investigator. “Ice Angel,” the sequel to Hart’s debut thriller “The Russian Pink,” brings back Slav Lily, Turner’s double-dealing Russian diamond thief and passionate lover.

This time the bad guys are government-connected, lavish-living Chinese billionaire twins lusting after what could be one of the world’s richest diamond fields. Hart threads international politics, murderous assassins, exotic geography, an extensive knowledge of the diamond trade and some very hot personal relationships into a pulse-pounding page turner.

The prologue opening is a killer. Diamond prospector Jimmy Angel and a grizzly bear tangle over a foot-long salami sub.

“A sub has a pretty good shelf life in the Artic, as long as you leave out things like lettuce and tomato. … He had 12 subs – a three-day supply. … Eight miles downwind, the bear was snuffling among the Saskatoon berries when the first molecules of salami sub arrived. Eight miles is not far for a bear … a smelling machine that eats. … Those salami molecules sailed in loud and clear. They hit the bear’s nose like a freight train. His shaggy head went up with a jerk, and he made the bear noise that translates as: whoa!

“And then that bear went loping out of the bushes on a beeline for Jimmy’s Camp. A grizzly bear. Ursus horribilis.”

After reading “The Ice Angel,” you may find a need to go off searching for diamonds. Take along some cans.

C.F. Foster looks for diamonds in Riverside.