Product Description

Meg Gardener has one of the choice jobs in Missoula, Montana open to ex-cons. She's a repo lady, snagging cars back from deadbeat owners. Although dogged by bad memories and a glass-half-empty attitude, Meg believes she can get her life together. A new boyfriend and cozy cottage are helping her to do it-until she picks up a Jeep Cherokee belonging to a murdered man...On the Jeep's back seat is a mysterious briefcase that is the catalyst for setting off a chain of events: A small-time Russian thief steals the briefcase. Then, a knife-wielding, tattooed lady comes looking for it. A scared Native American girl is in jail because of it. And lastly, a brutally delivered message tells Meg to find the damned case or her boyfriend dies. Suddenly her rosy-colored future is shattering like an ice statue hit by a sledgehammer. Desperate to protect what little she has, and driven by ghosts from her own past, Meg plunges ahead-and finds herself involved in a dangerous web of infidelity, greed, and murder...AUTHORBIO: JENNY SILER, who was educated at Andover and Columbia, lives in Missoula, Montana.Besides writing, she had tended bar, driven a forklift, and graded salmon. Her first novel, Easy Money, was a New York Times Notable Book.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1475781 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
In Meg Gardner, who's trying to put her life together after a string of small-time crimes and an 18-month stretch in prison, Jenny Siler has created another edgy, unsentimental heroine whose murky relationship with her father informs this gritty thriller just as it did for Allie Kerry, the protagonist of Easy Money, Siler's heralded debut novel. And Iced, set in the brilliant freezing glare of Montana in winter, is a worthy follow-up.

Meg's working her first legitimate job in years as a repo woman. Told to pick up former air force pilot Clay Bennett's Jeep, she's not exactly grief- stricken when she hears that Bennett's been killed in some kind of drunken exchange with a young Indian woman--it will make her job a lot easier. There's something familiar about the woman, Tina Red Deer, but until Bennett's Jeep is stolen from outside Meg's house and her life is threatened over a briefcase that was in his car, she doesn't make the connection between Bennett's supposed killer and her father's long-ago affair with a Native American woman that led him to abandon Meg and her mother. Even then, the connections are slow in coming. Meg has her hands full just trying to stay alive once it's clear that Bennett's briefcase seems to be missing some maps that a couple of very dangerous people will do anything to get--including kill the only man she's loved and trusted since her father deserted her.

The plot is less clear-cut than it might be, and Meg's connection with Tina Red Deer, while psychologically interesting, isn't successful from a novelistic point of view. Meg herself remains the center of the mystery; one senses that only a few of her many dimensions have been explored here, owing to the limitations of the plot. But there are flashes of sheer brilliance in the narrative and wonderful metaphorical descriptions of an unforgiving landscape:

Growing up, I loved the fire season, the perpetual dusk that hung over the valley, the extraterrestrial sunsets ... some afternoons, when lightning storms raked across the mountains, dozens of small fires smoldered in the thick cover of the evergreens. If I think of my life in terms of combustion, it's this kind of lightning fire that comes to mind. Not a flash immolation but a slow kindling, a red ember smoking for hours, even days, until it explodes in the dry underbrush and the forest bursts into fiery tongues. Though I can't pinpoint the instant when my life ignited, there are important moments I go back to again and again. Like the day almost 20 years ago when my mother shot my father.

Iced is a strong successor to an auspicious debut, one that will leave the reader longing for Siler's next. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly
Having established herself as one of the new talents in tough gal crime fiction with last year's Easy Money, Siler stays with the form in her latest, though she introduces a new lead character and locale. Her protagonist is Meg Gardner, a hard-living, whiskey-drinking repo woman from Missoula, Mont., just out of prison for stabbing her boyfriend. Gardner isn't looking for trouble, but when she stumbles onto a crime scene in the middle of a routine repossession, she finds herself mixed up in a sticky investigation into the death of local travel agent Clayton Bennett. On the back seat of the dead man's SUV is a briefcase containing a bunch of maps of the remote mountains north of town. Before Gardner can return the car to the repo company, two tough individualsDa Russian mobster and a brute of a womanDdrop by for a visit, demanding the briefcase. Gardner gives it to the Russian, then starts poking around into Bennett's private life. She learns of a mysterious incident nearly 50 years earlier in which Bennett, at the time an Air Force reserve pilot, crash-landed a plane high in the Bitterroots range. Given up for dead, he reemerged two months later, babbling incoherently. Ever since, Bennett has been trying to locate the crash site. Gardner, and now several others, want to know why. Though it lacks a solid punch at its end, Siler's second novel shows fine movement and rhythm. She handles the hard-boiled writing style with a natural grace, never sounding forced or stagy. Her flashback-heavy construction of Gardner's character gets tiresome, but it effectively reveals Gardner as a complex soul, faithless and dour, as rugged as the Montana wilderness. Agent, Nat Sobel. Author tour. (Jan. 11)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The tough-guy hero here, an ex-drifter, ex-con, and petty criminal, lives a hardscrabble life in Missoula, Montana, and regularly gets beat up by other tough guys. The only difference from the standard tough-guy heroes who drink hard, live alone, and sometimes spit out teeth is that this guy is a woman. Repo woman Meg Gardner regards the death of Clay Bennett, stabbed in a tavern brawl, as the perfect chance to repossess his Jeep Cherokee. But the act of reclaiming the Cherokee brings on a host of problems: a number of people want what Bennett, the owner of a charter plane outfit, had in that Jeep and are willing to beat or even kill Meg to get it. Meg finds that Bennett's map points the way to hidden crimes and plots. The gutsy, gritty heroine routine verges on parody, but Siler gives a gripping portrayal of life on the skids in an unforgiving landscape. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Customer Reviews

Iced is a chilling Montana winter's tale!
When Clay Bennett's corpse is pulled from some frozen weeds the Missoula Cops think they have an open-and-shut case - a brawl gone awry. For repo woman Meg Gardner, intent on getting Bennett's Jeep back, it's the break she's been looking for. Trouble is someone else wants the auto too. In a bitter December night, Meg stumbles into a dangerous bunch of Russian thugs intent on messing with her mission.

Meg Gardner is an unlikely heroine fraught with glorious & damaging childhood memories; a recent past that's far from squeaky clean; a lover who's too good for her & the chance for sublime domestic bliss. A chance two unusual & equally lethal opponents ruthlessly undermine.

Bring out your sweater, put another log on the fire & settle in for a rip-snortin' whodunit in the dead of a Montana winter. Brrr - couldn't tell if I was shivering from the yarn or the cold! Do visit my site for my full review & eInterview with this lively author.

WORTH READING
ICED takes place in Missoula Montana, where Meg Gardner an ex- con turned repo woman, is trying to get her life together. Meg has to repo a jeep belonging to Clay Bennett, the same Clay Bennett that was just found dead. Meg figures that it will be easy to get the jeep back, but once she has it back the trouble starts. Someone else wants the jeep, next thing you know Meg is drawn into a murder mystery involving sex and violence. As Meg tries to solve the mystery she must deal with her own ghosts from her past as well as deal with Russian thugs and Tina Red Dear, a Native American woman who could very well be her half sister. I thought that ICED was well written but left me with to many unanswered questions about Megs past. The mystery involving Clay Bennett was top-notch with plenty of suspense. Meg is a protagonist that really wants to be left alone to live her life low- key with coffee, cigarettes, beer, and burgers in that order.

great drama
After spending eighteen months in a New Mexico State penitentiary, twenty-nine-year-old Meg Gardner returns to her home in Missoula, Montana. Meg hopes to forge a relationship with her estranged parents, but fails to achieve her goal. Instead, Meg rents a small home and works as a repo person, taking possession of cars from individuals who default on their payments.

Her current job is to repossess Clay Bennett's Cherokee Jeep since the debtor is dead. Inside the vehicle, Meg notices a locked briefcase. Meg begins to open the briefcase, but has to stop when Ivan and his thugs demand she hand it over even to the point of using force. A woman comes by asking about the briefcase and Meg informs her that Ivan holds it. Next the police chief questions Meg. She learns that the deceased crashed a plane years ago and has been searching for it ever since. Soon someone threatens Meg's boyfriend and a buddy of Clay is dead. Meg has no idea what is going on, but if she is to remain alive, she better find out soon.

Jenny Siller has a lyrical style that allows readers to use their senses to vividly understand the local terrain and climate (wear a scarf it is cold up north). Through a series of flashbacks, the audience learns about the scandal surrounding Meg's parents, why she did hard time, and what she did before returning to Montana. The mystery is cleverly devised leading to a richly textured book that has several interesting levels for fans to discern.

Harriet Klausner