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A woman dragged into danger…

Dr. Samantha Park’s life is shaken when her best friend and research partner dies barely two months into their eight-month stretch at the South Pole. She hasn’t begun to face her loss when men from Cobra International Security arrive to recover sensitive military components from a crashed satellite—and ask her to come with them. As a scientist, she has always been suspicious of the military, and flying across Antarctica in austral winter is more like suicide than a rescue mission. But when she hears what’s at stake, she agrees to help and is forced to put her trust in Thor Isaksen, the tall, broad-shouldered Dane who leads the Cobra team.

The only man who can keep her alive…

Thor served as an elite soldier in Afghanistan and spent two years as part of a Danish spec-ops unit patrolling sea ice in the Arctic. He’s used to the cold and constant darkness. That’s why he’s been tapped to lead this mission. Under orders to do whatever he must to keep a dangerous weapon from falling into enemy hands, he’s prepared for every scenario—except one. Samantha, with her blue eyes and brilliant mind, takes him by surprise. She’s confident in her abilities as a scientist and yet so unsure of herself as a woman. Stuck at the station with his team until the weather clears, he can’t ignore the growing attraction he feels for her even if she’s the last thing he should be doing on the job.

A killer who will destroy them all…

As temperatures drop to one hundred below, the heat between Thor and Samantha flares out of control. But a killer is lurking on station, someone with an agenda that threatens not only the lives of every person there, but also global peace. It will take all of Thor’s skill and strength to stop the murderous traitor—and keep himself and the woman he loves alive.

What starts out as sabotage – with vague implications for world security that’s not brought any further than that – turns into a murder mystery in the brutal cold. Set mostly in the deep, chilly region of Antarctica, ‘Hard Line’ was interest-grabbing from the start–but then again, I tend to gravitate towards extreme environments and an author’s ability to make use of such settings to craft a tale.

It’s the big Dane Thor Isaksen’s turn here (complete with the endearing foreign-language mistranslations from time to time) as the Antarctic environment makes the most use of his skills and his growing attraction to Dr. Samantha Park. Thor and Samantha are generally likeable good guys who are dedicated to their own fields of work: both genuinely care about each other after a short time together, are straight with each other and don’t take each other for a ride like many romantic pairings are wont to do.

Pamela Clare’s Cobra Elite series continues its run as books that that focus equally on romance and straightforward suspense plot-lines, as elite operatives from Cobra International fall one by one, into their HEAs in diverse contexts and wildly different environments.

And like most RS books, there’s always a part that demands the suspension of belief and it wasn’t surprising that there were a few moments here as well, where I had to shut an eye to several unlikely situations. Still, ‘Hard Line’ was an easy read and an engaging one: I liked it for the setting mostly and didn’t have too many issues at all with the characters, but it did in the end, lack some kind of chutzpah that would propel a book to a 5-star rating.