Britt had been at the scene of the attempted burglary in which the young man tried to gain entrance to a small jewelry and watch repair shop. The owner had had so much trouble with break-ins that he had installed homemade electrical wires in the air conditioning vent. The youth, attempting to slide down the vent, had hit the hot wire and been electrocuted. The hapless storeowner is to be charged with homicide because his wiring was not in compliance with the code. An unfortunate circumstance all around, it would seem.

The dead man is of interest to Britt because he has an unusual pattern of scars on his body. Her inquiries lead her to Craig Burgh, a chief investigator for the newly formed Cold Case Squad. Burgh has a fantastic memory for old unsolved cases, and the young man’s disfigurement makes him recall a fourteen year old case in which a teenager was killed and his girl friend gang raped, brutalized and left for dead. Remarkably, she survives and her description of one of the attackers is eerily similar to the man in the morgue.

Because of budgetary constraints and departmental politics, Burgh is told not to follow up on the lead, but his dogged determination forces him to encourage Britt to pursue the matter on her own. He promises to give as much assistance as he can. Britt contacts Sunny Hartley, the survivor of the fourteen year old attack. Sunny, estranged from her family, is trying to succeed as a sculptress. She especially enjoys working with ice, having first learned to carve ice sculptures for hotel banquets. Because of her frosty attitude toward strangers and her medium of choice, she has been dubbed the ice maiden.

Although sympathetic to Sunny’s obviously difficult struggle to overcome the trauma she suffered as a teenager, the incident is so intriguing to Britt that she can’t let it alone until she discovers the truth about what happened that fateful Christmas Eve so many years ago.

The Ice Maiden succeeds admirably as a page turning thriller. The shock that Britt (and the reader) register upon seeing a corpse extracted from an air conditioning shaft is only the start of a wild ride through the environs of south Florida. Ms. Buchanan skillfully relates the dogged casework involved in extracting the details of how the corpse ended up where he did without boring the reader for a second. As the main characters go about their occupations, their emotional and intellectual makeup is fleshed out so thoroughly that the reader easily understands why they act as they do. Concurrently, the action never stops.

There is no question that this tale takes place in Miami. In other mystery novels I often find myself trying to remember where the author has taken me. I felt no such confusion reading The Ice Maiden. Miami plays a major role and not solely because of its reputation for criminal activity. The tropical climate, the various waterways that intersect the city, and the intense Cuban influence dictate that this story could have taken place nowhere else. The mixture of cultural heritages is uniquely Miami.

Dialogue is another of Ms. Buchanan’s strong points. The reader can easily picture in his mind what each individual must be like by his speech patterns, and what he has to say. The interaction between the characters brings out their intellectual and emotional strengths and weaknesses. Ms. Ice Maiden herself seems an enigma at first sight, yet as the tale progresses, her true nature becomes quite clear.

The novel ends, literally, with a bang. In the final few chapters, at first it appears that all difficulties have been resolved and, while some hardship must be endured by certain characters, all is well - or at least settled. The author has yet a surprise or two up her sleeve, preserving the fever pitch excitement until the final page.

--Andy Plonka