Leah Giarratano's Black Ice is a crime novel that portrays a clash between the glitz-and-glamour of the Eastern suburbs and the underworld of Sydney's west. It follows the exploits of undercover detective Jill Jackson ("Krystal"), her super-model-good-looking party-girl sister Cassie and single mother Seren, a woman with a heart of gold who got mixed up with the wrong people and ended up doing a jail sentence while her ten-year-old son Marco was farmed out to DoCs. Together and apart these women More...

I've been waiting interminably for Black Ice. I find that one of the worst things of finding a new favourite author is devouring all they've writen and having to wait for the next offering.

I think what I like most about Giarratano is her attenttion to real crime. The way it really is out there. You can feel she's really seen it.

Black Ice is my favourite in the Jill Jackson series so far. Each of the books tackles a topic: Vodka - paedophillia; Voodoo - child abuse and the creation of psychopaths More...

Leah Giarratano, forensic psychologist, crime fiction writer and consummate storyteller has just released her third novel - BLACK ICE. As with both of the earlier books, Giarratano takes the reader deep into a specific world of crime and criminal behaviour, the theme in BLACK ICE is illegal drugs.

Readers of the two earlier books will know about DS Jill Jackson, a survivor of child sexual abuse, she has fought her way back from despair and continues, ever so gradually, to get control of her life More...

In BLACK ICE, her third in a series featuring city detective Jill Jackson, Giarratano picks at the scab of Sydney’s murky drugs underbelly; a world where everyone from glamorous A-Listers to addicted streetkids to and vicious gangs, all collide.

The publisher's blurb states: "Living in a run down flat and making unlikely friends Jill sees first hand what devastation the illegal drugs scene can wreak. Jill's sister Cassie has a new boyfriend Christian Worthington. Like her, he is one of the beaut More...

Terrifying. Tense. If even only half of this reflects the reality of a drug culture, it makes me realise how lucky I am.

An enjoyable crime fiction.

Another great one by Leah Giarratano.

I'm not usually a big fan of undercover stories, I like my cops to behave like cops, but this one was excellent: all the secondary characters felt real and I found myself caring for everybody in "Krystal"'s life.

The ending was a bit too good to be true, but hey, a little feel-good moment in such a grim story, I won't complain.

#aww2013 no.7