This review is based on the audiobook edition

I rarely put aside a book without finishing it, but after a disappointing forty-five minutes into the audiobook for "Fire and Ice," I was done.

The description on the audiobook jacket sounded promising: Sophie Rose is the daughter of a notorious thief. She's also a reporter, and when her boss at the major Chicago paper insists she write an expose about her father, she quits. Now at a smaller newspaper, she's assigned to a story about a polite but egocentric runner and his upcoming 5k race. Then, when the runner's corpse turns up in Alaska with Sophie's business tucked in his trademark red socks, Sophie heads to Alaska to investigate. There, she learns her father's infamy preceeded her, so she's assigned an FBI bodyguard and "they will soon be fighting more than growing passion," according to the blurb. I assumed it would be your typical romantic suspense novel, with lots of action, a little mystery, and a tidy ending with the hero and heroine living happily ever after. However, "Fire and Ice" was nowhere near reaching even those average expectations.

It begins with a blase description of some academic, scientific study that seemed completely unrelated (although had I finished the book, I'm guessing I would have found the connection). Then the reader is introduced to a single-minded, full-of-himself runner who wears the same red socks in every race. By the way, this is the guy who we already know from the book's cover is going to die pretty quickly, yet the author describes him and his quirks in excess.

By the time the main character is introduced, I'm bored to distraction by the narrator's flat, monotone voice, unimaginative dialogue and otherwise dull word choice. I'm doing my best to keep an open mind, thinking that all this drudgery is leading up to an exciting heroine and her handsome, heroic leading man. Instead, I meet a lifeless Sophie Rose who has no backbone and her rotten, disgusting, obnoxious coworker who, like the runner, gets way too much of the author's attention and adds absolutely nothing of interest or to advance the plot.

Next up, the entrance of our main man, FBI agent Jack MacAlister. Okay, I think, so *this* is where things will get interesting.

Wrong again.

The action actually devolves into an even less realistic scenario: Jack interrupts a robbery and takes down the armed thief with "a single shot to the heart." Seriously? A highly trained law enforcement agent doesn't shoot just once; a double tap is standard practice in deadly situations. His partner is worse, drawing his weapon as he deftly slid across the hood of the car. Oh, and the dead robber just happens to be a notorious drug lord. Sounds like a bad cop drama! And don't even get me started on the rampant internet references, which makes it sound as if the author was required to mention certain websites but had zero experience with the concept of social networking.

Maybe reading the physical book, where you're not listening to the drone of a bored narrator, and where you can skim over the excessive descriptions, would be better than the audiobook version. But I doubt it.