Reviewed by Dan

TITLE:    Fire and Ice

SERIES:     Carlisle Cops #2

AUTHOR:     Andrew Grey

PUBLISHER:  Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH:     192 Pages

BLURB:

Carter Schunk is a dedicated police officer with a difficult past and a big heart. When he’s called to a domestic disturbance, he finds a fatally injured woman, and a child, Alex, who is in desperate need of care. Child Services is called, and the last man on earth Carter wants to see walks through the door. Carter had a fling with Donald a year ago and found him as cold as ice since it ended.

Donald (Ice) Ickle has had a hard life he shares with no one, and he’s closed his heart to all. It’s partly to keep himself from getting hurt and partly the way he deals with a job he’s good at, because he does what needs to be done without getting emotionally involved. When he meets Carter again, he maintains his usual distance, but Carter gets under his skin, and against his better judgment, Donald lets Carter guilt him into taking Alex when there isn’t other foster care available. Carter even offers to help care for the boy.

Donald has a past he doesn’t want to discuss with anyone, least of all Carter, who has his own past he’d just as soon keep to himself. But it’s Alex’s secrets that could either pull them together or rip them apart—secrets the boy isn’t able to tell them and yet could be the key to happiness for all of them.

REVIEW:

Welcome to the second book in Andrew Grey’s Carlisle Cops series. This book could easily be read as a standalone, because it contains only brief references to the characters from the previous book. I loved the previous book though, so would recommend you pick it up at some point!

Carter Schunk feels he is the department geek. He sees himself as a geek and he is usually consigned to the basement at the police station working diligently on solving the online aspects of the city’s cases with his tech wizardry, but he wants more street time, and he is finally getting back to it.

When Carter answers a domestic violence call about a screaming woman, his life is about to change. Once the woman is being treated by the EMTs and the man has been arrested, Carter stumbles onto some children’s clothing in one of the upstairs bedrooms, as well as a stuffed animal. Everyone thinks he is crazy, but he insists on searching the house from basement to attic to make sure there isn’t a child there anywhere.

Carter is the one to search the attic, and after finding the stairs hidden behind everything in the master bedroom closet, he goes into the attic. He is instantly assaulted with the overpowering smell in the attic and finds a small, very frightened boy peeking over the bed at him.

The little boy says his name is “piece of shit”, but Carter is able to coax out of him that his mommy sometimes calls him Alex.

Family Services is called, and of course it has to be the guy that Carter slept with a few months ago that never bothered to call him after their one wild weekend. Donald Ickle, commonly nicknamed Ice by people who know him, is a kind of cold, reserved individual. What will happen when there isn’t any place to send little Alex in the system until after the weekend?  It is Friday night, can Alex and Carter start melting the ice?

I really enjoyed this story. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book. I didn’t read the blurb, so wasn’t sure if it would be a continuation of the first book, or a whole new story. I should have known that Andrew would bring us a new tale, affiliated with, but not continuing the first book. Although the story deals with child abuse and child pornography, the references are mostly off screen and not detailed, so shouldn’t keep you from reading the book.

I highly recommend this book. I read it cover to cover today without a break. Take my advice and pick it up today!

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon

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