Book Review: "Heart of Ice" by Lis Wiehl with April Henry

Summary from BN.com: The Triple Threat women have faced intense situations before…but never such a cunningly cold-blooded murderer. Elizabeth Avery is a stunningly beautiful woman. But her perfectly managed exterior hides the ice cold heart of a killer. She ingeniously manipulates everyone who crosses her path to do exactly as she wishes--from crime reporter Cassidy Shaw, who thinks Elizabeth is her new best friend, to a shy young man Elizabeth persuades to kill for her. As Elizabeth leaves a trail of bodies in her wake, Federal prosecutor Allison Pierce and FBI agent Nicole Hedges must piece together clues from seemingly unrelated crimes. Can they stop her before she reaches her unthinkable, ultimate end-game?

After reading this book, I almost felt like killing someone. No, not because the book was bad. From from it in fact. I loved the story. It's a really good suspense book. Sometimes all the different story lines got a bit confusing but overall I found all of them intriguing. I especially connected most with Allison's story and her sister who is a recovering addict. That storyline felt very close to home.

No, the reason why I felt a bit murderous was because I absolutely hated Elizabeth's character. I honestly cannot stand reading about psychopath and sociopath killers in books so it was very hard to continue reading about her. The callousness and the lack of sympathy for human life was just dreadful. Ironically, I kept wanting to slap her in the face. This sounds horrible of me, but I had no sympathy for her at all. Even after finding out what happened to her when she was a child didn't produce any emotional feelings for her from me at all. This is not saying that she's a badly written character. Wiehl and Henry have created a perfect monster. I just hated her and was quite glad for the outcome.

As usual, I enjoyed the use of real life headlines and television news knowledge in the story. It's very obvious that the real life Craigslist killer is the model for the secondary killer in the book. Everything about him is just like the CL killer but for those who completely missed out on knowing about it won't feel lost. It's an interesting way to tie in current events into the story without feeling dated. I only regret that we are left hanging about his fate at the end.

Faith elements seemed to be randomly sprinkled throughout the book. I honestly feel like the story was written and then either the writers or the editors went back and added the Christian bits to cater to a certain crowd. It just never seemed natural for me for any of the main characters to talk or live their faith throughout the story. Any mention of it felt tacked on. This was a problem I had with the previous books in the series as well. I honestly thought it could be left out and the story would become stronger then.

Other than this, I really enjoyed the book. There's a lot of suspense and the story line is very tightly written. It's very much something that could be reported on CNN (or in this case Fox News) at any given point of the day. I think there are going to be more books in the Triple Threat series and I say bring it on! I really enjoy these books and I cannot wait for more.

Heart of Ice by Lis Wiehl with April Henry is published by Thomas Nelson (2011)

This review copy was provided by the publisher

Other books in the Triple Threat series that I have reviewed:

Face of Betrayal (Book 1)
Hand of Fate (Book 2)