When I read Toni Anderson’s latest Cold Justice book, Cold Truth (book 6 of Cold Justice: Most Wanted) a while back, it reminded me that I still had a couple of her Cold Justice spin-off books on my TBR pile, one of which was Colder than Sin, the second book in the Cold Justice: The Negotiators series. I was reminded particularly of that book because the principal storyline of Cold Truth involves the search the FBI’s most wanted terrorist who is believed responsible for the attack on the international security symposium that takes place in Colder Than Sin. So I decided to remedy the omission; Toni Anderson is one of my go-to authors for romantic suspense and I knew I’d be in for a cracking, tightly-plotted story full of danger, action and suspense featuring courageous, intelligent characters who are easy to root for.

Quentin Savage, chief of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit, has just delivered the keynote speech at the international security symposium he’s attending in Indonesia. He’d much rather be coordinating the rescue of the young female volcanologist abducted from remote Banda Island just a few days earlier, but that isn’t his case. With things winding down, Quentin is having a drink with an old army buddy when he can’t help but notice an absolutely stunning woman enter the room. As he leaves the bar, their eyes meet for a second and attraction sparks; but they both seem to know that nothing is going to come of it.

The majority of the symopsium’s attendees are the owners and executives of some of the most elite private security firms in the world, and there’s a lot of wheeling and dealing going on as contracts worth millions are negotiated and re-negotiated. One of the very few women at the event – and the only female owner of one of the firms represented – is Haley Cramer of Cramer, Parker & Gray, a small, but highly respected company specialising in cybersecurity (former CIA assassin Alex Parker appeared in the very first Cold Justice book, A Cold Dark Place and has made the odd cameo appearance in several of the books published since). Haley certainly wouldn’t have minded getting up close and personal with the handsome FBI agent she’d glimpsed from across the room – but maybe it’s for the best that it’s not going to happen. Haley likes to be in charge when it comes to relationships and something tells her that a man like Quentin Savage is unlikely to want to let her dictate terms. After he leaves, she turns her attention back to business, and the deal with an Australian mining conglomerate she wants to land for her company.

Later that night, Quentin is surprised when a clearly distressed Haley Cramer bursts through the doors leading from the balcony into his hotel room. Quickly, she explains how she’d come close to being assaulted by her prospective client, and that her only way out had been over the balcony. Furious on her behalf, Quentin warns her against going back to her room (which is next door), a warning borne out when they hear people moving about in there. He suggests she should stay with him for the night – he’ll take the sofa – and they’ll go back to her room quickly in the morning to grab her stuff and then leave the hotel together. Grateful, Haley agrees to the plan – apart from the part about Quentin sleeping on the sofa. After some of the most spectacularly hot sex either of them can recall, they’re out for the count – until awakened a few hours later by the sound of gunfire coming from the hotel lobby.

With no way of knowing for sure what’s happening, Quentin and Haley dress quickly and leave via the window, climbing down to the ground and then heading off into the nearby jungle to get a better view of events. And what they see is horrific. It’s a blood-bath; the attackers are killing everyone and have set fire to the building. Quentin and Haley manage to make contact with people in the US – Quentin with his boss, Haley with Alex Parker – to tell them what’s happened, but before they can do anything more, they’re found and taken hostage.

That in itself is strange – the terrorists have killed everyone else, so why keep them alive? Whatever the reason, they’ll have to put their questions on the back-burner; they need to make their escape soon, before the lack of food and water render them too weak. Luck is on their side when they manage to pick the lock on the ramshackle hut they’re being kept in and Quentin quickly disposes of the single guard. He and Haley are on their way out of the camp when they hear a woman screaming in English – and realise this must be another hostage. Pausing their escape is a risk, but they can’t simply leave her there, so Quentin sends Haley down to the water to secure a boat while he goes to help the woman – who is Darby O’Roarke, the volcanologist who’d been kidnapped days earlier.

Colder Than Sin is fast-paced, suspenseful and gritty, and the author doesn’t shy away from including sensitive topics (see my note, below). Quentin and Haley are very mindful of what Darby has gone through and do a good job of taking their cues from her when it comes to what she’s prepared to talk about, but they don’t coddle her; they treat her as the intelligent person she is and the three of them work well together as they execute their plans for rescue. There’s plenty of high-stakes tension and drama as Quentin, Haley and Darby have to fight for survival, and the plotline about why Quentin was targeted is intruguing, with plenty of red herrings along the way. I had my suspicions as to who might have been behind it all fairly early on, but I was never quite certain until the reveal, so extra brownie points for that!

I liked the characters, although it’s probably telling that of the three main ones, Darby ended up being the most interesting. Quentin is your classic tall, dark, handsome and deadly – fiercely intelligent and loyal with a protective streak a mile wide – and I appreciated the weight given to the issues Haley so often encountered in her work, of being underestimated because of her gender and her looks. She’s clever and tough, and even though she’s scared, she keeps her head and does what needs to be done, realising that their very survival depends on all of them pulling together. On the downside, though, she does have some TSTL moments. For instance, I had to ask myself why a supposedly shrewd businesswoman would agree to conduct a business meeting in a client’s hotel room when it was very clear that the only business he was interested in was the kind conducted horizontally. I also side-eyed her jumping into bed with Quentin so quickly afterwards. Haley has her reasons (and Quentin is all kinds of hot!) – she wants to forget and to reclaim her autonomy – but it still felt a bit off to me. I’m also not a fan when characters who are in the middle of a fight or flight stop to shag, so Haley and Quentin having a quickie while the terrorists are looking for them feels as though they’ve completely abandonded their common sense. Perhaps the author was going for a life-affirmation kind of thing (let’s make the most of what time we’ve got left and all that), but it seems a bit crass, especially as they’ve left Darby waiting for them somewhere else!

There’s a bit of relationship drama later on, when Quentin and Haley are finally forced to face the things in their pasts which have made them so wary of falling for someone, and to assess whether something real can come from a relationship begun under fire. I liked that the question is brought up – they both have valid concerns and they do address them – but I wasn’t wild about the eleventh-hour conflict, which is contrived – and unnecessary considering the whole story is full of conflict!

So, Colder Than Sin wasn’t as big a success for me as Cold Truth was, but it’s entertaining with plenty of action, a solid suspense plot and a steamy romance, and I enjoyed it anyway.

Note: there are various discussions of and references to sexual assault (there is nothing graphic on the page) in this story, and it also touches on the loss of a loved one, infertility and stillbirth.

(For a complete list of trigger warnings for this novel, visit: https://www.toniandersonauthor.com/books/cold-justice-the-negotiators/colder-than-sin/)