Ice Cold Kill

January 21, 2013
This uneven series kickoff from Haynes (Crashers) introduces Daria Gibron, a former member of Israeli intelligence who has since worked for the FBI, DEA, and ATF. In the dramatic prologue, Gibron survives a hit put on her in Los Angeles by a narcotics cartel. Meanwhile, Asher Sahar, has been released from prison, where, as the leader of a rogue group of operatives of both Shin Bet and the Mossad, he did time for plotting the assassination of a pro–peace process Israeli parliament member. Sahar now schemes to set up Gibron and Maj. Khalid Belhadj, of Syria’s Military Intelligence Directorate, by planting evidence that the two natural enemies intend to take out the U.S. president. Gibron and Belhadj must join forces to stay alive. Gibron often comes across as cartoonish (“Captured by a Syrian spy, called a ‘horse’ by the Central Intelligence Fucking Agency, and a legendarily bad hair day to boot. Simply perfect”), while the thriller plot reads like one from a lesser episode of the TV show 24. Agent: Janet Reid, FinePrint Literary Management.

February 1, 2013
Daria Gibron, the former Israeli Shin Bet agent now operating as an one-woman destruction crew for the FBI, eludes every secret intelligence agency in the world but catches a recombinant RNA virus in the process. John Broom, the CIA analyst who wrote the background report on Gibron, insists that she's no threat to American security even though she has plans to meet Maj. Khalid Belhadj, a 15-year veteran of the Mukhabarat (the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate), in New York. The last time they met, Daria tried to kill him. Oddly, she's warned off the rendezvous, causing a brouhaha within the CIA that sets Gibron on the run with Belhadj. Meanwhile, Will Halliday, a Secret Service turncoat, is helping Asher Sahar, reactivated by the Group, an unauthorized Israeli dirty-tricks squad, to steal a canister full of some lethal stuff from Denver. When analysts decide that the tie-in between the superspies, now code named Pegasus A, has as its target the U.S. president, a geopolitical chase for them begins, hopping from country to country before they can target the world leaders attending a summit meeting. The chase winds up outside Paris, where two groups of snipers confront each other on a rooftop while Sahar hunkers down in a room created within a room within another room below. Gibron, who's known Sahar since they were children sequestered with host families while the Mossad trained them, infiltrates his lair and decides to stop him but becomes contaminated by the canister's contents. Sahar heads for an escape tunnel while sundry intelligence agencies shell the building, but Gibron catches him and severs his spinal cord, leading to a face-off between her and her temporary ally Belhadj. Enough intelligence agencies, bad guys and gruesome viruses for a month of nonstop massacres. When Haynes runs out of guns and knives to put in the hands of superheroine Daria (Breaking Point, 2011, etc.), he turns oxygen tanks into missiles for her to launch.

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Starred review from February 15, 2013
After shedding her skin as a Shin Bet operative, Daria Gibron is happily juggling double lives in the U.S., shrewdly masking an FBI covert ops gig with her cover as a high-demand interpreter. Past experience has taught her that it's dangerous to get comfortable, however, and she's barely surprised when a meeting with an undercover operative friend morphs into an elaborate frame-up. Cast as a rogue agent providing arms for Syrian Khalid Belhadj's alleged plot to assassinate the U.S. president, Daria finds her American alliances instantly destroyed when she's red-lighted by the CIA. After a bit of spying reveals the set-up's mastermind as a cunning Israeli operative seemingly resurrected from the dead, it's clear that she's being used as a distraction from a larger plot that's completely off the CIA's radar. Dodging various well-armed international intelligence groups, Daria teams with Belhadj, albeit uneasily, to track the terrorists. Haynes steers the array of heavy themes (Arab Spring, biological weapons, child soldiers, and secret societies) into a strong, complicated plot as believable as any real-life terrorist threat. Daria is destined to become a favorite in the growing arsenal of female thriller leads. She combines brains and experience to craft unbeatable strategy, and she has the requisite combat skills to quash any agent in her path as well as a witty, moderately well-adjusted (under the circumstances) perspective that's sure to charm.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)