Iced Book

The number of tough-gal writers has always been a small. Way back in the 20th century, for example, there was Leigh Brackett, who, after publishing her first novel, No Good From A Corpse, received an urgent summons from director Howard Hawks. He wanted her to join the team of scriptwriters (including William Faulkner) then hard at work adapting Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep for the screen. The only problem was, he believed her to be a man.In recent times, there's been a lot less confusion but a barely noticeable increase in the number of women who prefer pulp plots to polite ones. In England we've had Liza Cody's stunningly gritty Eva Wylie titles and also Lauren Henderson's cheeky takes on noir with titles like Black Rubber Dress. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, 20-something Jenny Siler burst on the scene with her debut, Easy Money, demonstrating that hard-boiled is a state of mind not entirely dependent on testosterone. With its heroine Allie Kerry, a former cokehead and courier for various unsavoury interests, on the run, Easy Money treated readers to an exhausting, exhilarating road-trip across a bleak landscape of very bad intentions. Now Iced, introducing Meg Gardner, a character equally trouble-prone, offers up a no-less-bumpy ride against the backdrop of Missoula, Montana, in that dead-cold season when "the air reeked of the tundra, of glacier-churned dirt and stunted lichen".It's 18 degrees below zero, and Meg, working for a repo agency, has had to reclaim a Jeep Cherokee from a frozen corpse, one that she has watched being fished from a hole broken in a solid stretch of ice-covered river. It had been a tough but necessary call, to grab the car under such unusual circumstances, and was easily and efficiently accomplished, given the ordinarily expected hassles. But what Meg hadn't bargained for was the mysterious metal briefcase locked in the vehicle: an object of intense desire for a particularly nasty set of visitors who arrive, baseball bat in hand and with few compunctions about punching a woman in the stomach.If you're looking for good old-fashioned sex and violence, served up with a woman's touch, western scenery and a modern air, here's a suggestion: why not get Iced? --Otto PenzlerRead More