Customer Reviews

Trial by Ice and Fire

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4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(1)
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McKinzie's first book on SA Antonio Burns was enough to get me hooked, then the second was still good but not as good as the first, and this third book is the best yet. You like Antonio as he is an adventurous but grounded 30-yr old cop who is reevaluating his life and work after a series of mishaps that erroneously puts his reputation in a bad light. He fights for what he believes in but he's no superhero. Anton is given the task of protecting a prosecutor who is being stalked, and he is also dealing with his own personal issues: trying to figure out why his girlfriend has been cold and distant lately plus worrying about his drug-addicted fugitive brother. The prosecutor, the daughter of a famous movie star, is being stalked by someone, possibly her cop ex-boyfriend. The adventure starts with an icy mountain ascent and ends with a dangerous rescue operation on a mountain being consumed by a raging fire. I love reading about Antonio and his brother Roberto's climbing adventures, and I really like the romantic sub-plot. I look forward to seeing Clinton McKinzie's name in the spotlight again.

Trial by Ice and Fire hooks you from the very first page and doesn't really let you go till you finish. I tried to slow down my reading, savor the time I was spending with these characters but couldn't---I had to finish it and then go back and reread it again. This was an outstanding follow-up to last year's The Edge of Justice. Anton and his brother Roberto are back as are Anton's boss, McGee Ross and his lover, Rebecca. In this installment, Anton is bodyguarding a prosecuter from a stalker who seems to want to hurt her very badly. There are other subplots including his brother 'Berto who shows up to offer escape the only way the Burns brothers know how: climbing. Also, there is the trouble between Rebecca and Anton that in end seems a bit rushed to me;everything between them resolved a little too quickly. McKinzie will go very far with his writing and I look forward to his next novel. Run to get this book. If you enjoyed the first one, you'll love the second one. I read this book in a day if that says anything---wonderful page-turner. Highly recommend and my grade would be A-. New fans, the book does stand alone quite well but do read the first one, The Edge of Justice when you get the chance. It was a great debut.

I have to admit it, I was surprised by Clinton McKinzle. I picked up his first book, The Edge of Justice, thinking it was another lawyer turned writer yarn, when I realized it was just another cop novel, with the added twist of this cop being an avid mountain climber, I was kind of disappointed. I am not much of an outdoorsy type, I'm happy if I find a way to climb into my pants everyday, and didn't think I would enjoy stories about a cop chasing people around a mountain. Then I read the book and he hooked me in (I guess that's a pun). McKinzle has created a great character in Wyoming Special DCI Agent Antonio Burns. In his latest novel, Trial by Ice and Fire, McKinzle continues to develop his hard luck protagonist. With his reputation being picked apart by an unscrupulous defense attorney and his girlfriend becoming distant, Burns takes on a case involving the stalking of a beautiful actress's daughter, who also happens to be a local prosecutor. While the twist and turns aren't particularly surprising, McKinzle whips together a highly readable and exciting tale ending with a true trial by fire.
While enjoyed this book, it was the weakest of the three Burns novels, specifically for one reason. The first book had some truely hate-able, despicable, obvious bad guys that just had you salivating for the page where they finally get there just deserts. Here McKinzle trades off some of this blunt evil for an attempt to make a more surprising ending. He took the risk, but the payoff just wasn't there. I really don't need to be surprised if I hate the bad guy enough. McKinzle even missed a few opportunities to develop some peripheral bad guy characters, especially the Hollywood hotshot Danny Gorgon character, who had the potential to be a real pest.

Wyoming Special Agent Antonio Burns once killed three people in an incident that went so bad that he still wonders what else he could have done. Though his reputation thanks to the media pounding is that of "QuickDraw," his superiors assign Burns to protect state prosecutor Cali Morrow from a stalker.

The job seems easy on the surface or perhaps more descriptive the side of a cliff, but Antonio finds his personal life interceding. He is attracted to his charge while he has trouble with the woman he loves. His brother, an escaped con, is also climbing the Grand Tetons. Finally the stalker may even be a fellow law enforcement person. With all this closing in on him, Antonio plays mountainside chicken against Cali as his only escape.

The game of chicken is an incredibly written subplot that will leave the audience in either awe or debate the sanity of the two participants. The stalker plot is typical of the genre, but on the other hand his sibling in many ways steals the show with a fresh perspective on family values. Readers will appreciate this delightful suspense thriller that slyly gives new meaning to cliff hanging especially as Antonio goes over The EDGE OF JUSTICE.

Harriet Klausner

Antonio Burns is a Special Agent for the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation. He tends to live on the edge of danger as a lawman and when pursuing his hobby--mountain climbing in the extreme. His current assignment is to provide protection for Cali Morrow and find the culprit who's stalking her. Cali just happens to be the daughter of a popular movie star who shunned her mother's glitzy lifestyle to become a prosecutor in the Teton County Attorney's Office.

High on the suspect list is Cali's ex-boyfriend, Wook. He and Antonio are a fistfight waiting to happen. Next on the list is a weird loner living in a hovel on state land very close to Cali's Mom's ranch. When they find pictures of Cali plastered all over the interior of the makeshift `home', the guy crumbles and they think they've got their man. The next thing Antonio knows is Cali is in the hospital because the stalker attacked her. With egg on his face, Antonio seeks to regain his credibility. By this time I had figured out who the stalker is. The stalker is out to get Antonio as well...to keep him away from Cali...and puts Antonio through trials by ice and fire, both of which stretch the imagination and credibility factor quite a bit.

I enjoyed the author's first two books, The Edge of Justice and Point of Law, but this one got too carried away with the unbelievable human feats. I hope this won't continue in the next book.

I absolutely love it when I stumble across a find like this. The third novel in a series starring Wyoming state agent Antonio Burns finds Anton climbing peaks in Jackson Hole as he guards lovely prosecutor Cali Morrow, who's been threatened by a stalker. Cali is the daughter of movie star Alana Reese, who owns a ranch in Jackson, and she is currently prosecuting her ex-boyfriend, a big cop named Charles Wokowski, for using excessive force on a suspect. Wook is Anton's chief suspect for Cali's stalker, but there is also another guy, a squatter who's been arrested on similar charges before, whom Anton must investigate. Meanwhile, Anton's got a couple of personal issues: a girlfriend who seems to be on the verge of leaving him, and a brother who's wanted by the authorities for his nefarious activities. Roberto and Anton couldn't be closer, though, so `Berto keeps showing up at Anton's cabin at night, begging him to go climbing with him one more time before he turns himself in. Anton also owns a half-wolf named Mungo who seems scared of her own shadow, but Mungo starts getting in touch with her wolfish side through the course of the book.

McKinzie describes mountain climbs I would even think of attempting in a way that makes them seem little more difficult than ascending a flight of stairs. He describes the rush he feels when doing so as "feeding the Rat," a very apt expression to explain the thrill of doing something dangerous and special. Unfortunately, Anton's girlfriend Rebecca doesn't understand, and when she agrees to come to Jackson, her behavior is very strange. As Anton navigates the twists and turns of protecting Cali, which isn't as easy as anyone thought, it seems like the assignment itself might break his fragile hold on Rebecca. Or, he just might wind up dead.

Combining a delightfully engaging cast of characters, from Anton and `Berto, who grew up in Argentina and seem to have been born climbing mountains, to Antonio's boss, described as "a demented Santa Claus in a pinstripe suit," to muscular, soft-hearted Wook, these are all lively, colorful characters I hated to leave behind when the book ended. The mountain climbing scenes made me wish I had the ambition to do it, and the story was constantly moving along its twists and turns. This is definitely a must-read series.