This very enjoyable crime story is the second in the series about Larry B.Max a special agent for the American Internal Revenue Service. The story opens with a number of apparently unrelated killings and the arrival from Mexico to Los Angles of Ryan Ricks, a financial wizard and money laundry who has been underground for twelve years. The question is what could be bringing him back into daylight. The Drug Enforcement Agency are organising surveillance on Ricks when Max joins the meeting and the operation.
Max reveals that one of the agents is working for Ricks and they use him to track Ricks. There is a plot to kill one of the DEA agents, the Blue Ice of the title. The story develops nicely the reason Ricks is in Los Angles becomes clear and Max breaks into a roof top meeting Ricks is conducting. In the ensuing melee Ricks escapes and returns to Mexico pursued by Max.
The story continues in Mexico as Max attempts to pursue Ricks with the reluctant support of the Mexican authorities, who have a significant operation underway themselves. The story drives to a satisfactory conclusion with plenty of action along the way.
One of the admirable aspects to the book is that Max is not a plain clothes superhero, he is a highly trained, very persistent, very human law enforcement agent. The entire cast are skillfully presented and managed, the interactions between them all are not sacrificed to spectacle. The action when it arrives is driven by the cast and gains greatly from it. The overall plot is thoughtful and well paced, you are not hurried through the book and neither are there gaps that drop you out of the story.
The art is crisp and clean, there is a very significant amount of detail in each panel, it never appears crowed or full, they anchor the story very effectively in time and space, giving it weight and solidity.
