Dark Winter

Rating:
Summary: Very good Antarctic thriller
Review: A group of people are being eliminated by a psychopathic serial killer in Antarctica, without any hope of outside help. This is a very original and a very good novel. The description of this freezing continent, the mood of the characters as they face not only the killer but also the darkness and the cold, the psychological reactions are all expertly written by William Dietrich. A very good read which carries on from the first chapter to the last. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Curious mixture
Review: A well-written and well-thought out narrative of the physical,emotional and scientific challenges of wintering-over in the Antartic. I normally prefer mysteries and this novel certainly fulfilled that requirement as members of the scientific community disappeared or made ghastly (dead) appearances. In the wake of September 11, the author raises some issues about survival and what is important to the human species. The science presented was believable, understandable and fascinating! I will miss these characters...

Rating:
Summary: Curious mixture
Review: Agatha Christie took ten people off to a remote location for a weekend, and they started to die, one by one. William Dietrich isolates twenty-six people at the South Pole for several months, and guess what? "Ten Little Indians" happens to twenty-six ice- and dark-bound South Pole residents. (There are no penguins at the Pole; they are at the ocean hundreds of miles away.) Jed Lewis is a geologist turned meteorologist assigned as a last minute replacement to the team that will "winter-over" at the Amundsen-Scott Base at the South Pole. When the plane that bought Jed leaves, along with the last of the "summer people", the twenty-six remaining scientists and support staff are stranded-there will be no way in or out over the long, perpetually dark winter. (The very real April, 2001 evacuation of a critically ill doctor from Amundsen-Scott by a heroic small plane flight from McMurdo base emphasizes he isolation of the characters in the book.) Jed is actually a sort of secret agent. After becoming disenchanted with his work with "big oil" in secretly surveying the Alaskan nature reserves for oil deposits, he is looking for a new job. He meets a scientist who is working on global warming and needs data from the South Pole winter; but the technician who was going to winter over and collect data for him has canceled. It also seems that the top scientist at the Pole has found a rock buried deep in the ice. Since there are no rocks at the Pole, this must be a meteorite, but it is not the typical metallic rock. The find must be kept secret, because it could be very valuable-scientifically and commercially. Since Jed is a geologist, he can do the preliminary evaluation over the winter while collecting climate data. Meanwhile, he will have several months to consider his life and his options. In an almost foreseeable fashion, the plot begins to twist and turn when the rock disappears and then its finder is found dead. Clue after clue points toward Jed, who is the new guy and suspicious anyway-why was a geologist sent down to do climate research? There is romance, and there is skulduggery. The story is told well and the reader feels the isolation and fear as everyone seeks to find an easy answer to calm their terrors. Even if many parts of the plot are anticipated, the story is interesting-after all, Agatha Christie was not all that original in her stories, and they are still classics.

Rating:
Summary: 26 Little Penguins
Review: Agatha Christie took ten people off to a remote location for a weekend, and they started to die, one by one. William Dietrich isolates twenty-six people at the South Pole for several months, and guess what? "Ten Little Indians" happens to twenty-six ice- and dark-bound South Pole residents. (There are no penguins at the Pole; they are at the ocean hundreds of miles away.) Jed Lewis is a geologist turned meteorologist assigned as a last minute replacement to the team that will "winter-over" at the Amundsen-Scott Base at the South Pole. When the plane that bought Jed leaves, along with the last of the "summer people", the twenty-six remaining scientists and support staff are stranded-there will be no way in or out over the long, perpetually dark winter. (The very real April, 2001 evacuation of a critically ill doctor from Amundsen-Scott by a heroic small plane flight from McMurdo base emphasizes he isolation of the characters in the book.) Jed is actually a sort of secret agent. After becoming disenchanted with his work with "big oil" in secretly surveying the Alaskan nature reserves for oil deposits, he is looking for a new job. He meets a scientist who is working on global warming and needs data from the South Pole winter; but the technician who was going to winter over and collect data for him has canceled. It also seems that the top scientist at the Pole has found a rock buried deep in the ice. Since there are no rocks at the Pole, this must be a meteorite, but it is not the typical metallic rock. The find must be kept secret, because it could be very valuable-scientifically and commercially. Since Jed is a geologist, he can do the preliminary evaluation over the winter while collecting climate data. Meanwhile, he will have several months to consider his life and his options. In an almost foreseeable fashion, the plot begins to twist and turn when the rock disappears and then its finder is found dead. Clue after clue points toward Jed, who is the new guy and suspicious anyway-why was a geologist sent down to do climate research? There is romance, and there is skulduggery. The story is told well and the reader feels the isolation and fear as everyone seeks to find an easy answer to calm their terrors. Even if many parts of the plot are anticipated, the story is interesting-after all, Agatha Christie was not all that original in her stories, and they are still classics.

Rating:
Summary: Chilling
Review: For the 26 men and women who are wintering at the South Pole, they have to survive in possibly the most isolated place on the planet. During winter, the sun won't come up for eight months; they are completely alone to carry on their research. Many of them have done it before, so are not too disturbed at the prospect of being cut-off from the rest of the world, enduring the eight-month night. Until the killings start.

Not long after one of the scientists makes a significant, and possibly very profitable, discovery, members of the Amundsen-Scott Research Base begin to mysteriously disappear before being found dead. Is it an accident, suicide or something far more sinister? Unfortunately, for Jed Lewis, the new arrival on the base, all evidence seems to suggest that he's the murderer. In order to clear his name, he is compelled to find out just who is causing the mayhem.

This book had me wholly engrossed, both with the fascinating detail regarding survival in Antarctica and at the prospect of being cooped up for eight months with a killer. As more and more members of the tiny community are picked off, everyone's fears begin to get manipulated and rationality flies out the window. It's a chilling book in more ways than one.

Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Cold War
Review: Geologist Jed Lewis took a last-minute detour to Antarctica, as a favor to a friend. Seems Amundsen-Scott base's grand old man, astrophysicist Mickey Moss, may have found a Martian meteorite - and if he has, it could well be worth up to five million dollars. With that kind of money at stake, and a secret that can't last five minutes among twenty-six so close-knit administrators and scientists, it isn't long before the rock disappears...and, one by one, so do the crew of Amundsen-Scott. As if the cash incentive of the possible meteorite isn't enough, one of this year's base members is actually an exceptionally dangerous psychopath - who already has more than one murder to his credit.

This is a tightly-written, deeply involving thriller, part murder mystery, part action-adventure, and all survival story. The characters are memorable and well-drawn, no mean feat given the size of the cast. Dietrich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer for the Seattle Times and a real-life visitor of the famous international Antarctic base, giving his descriptions of living conditions in polar hell a keener edge than mere fiction. The suspense is excellent - though Dietrich could perhaps have made determining the killer's identity more difficult - and the action and the violence hold your attention, throughout.

I've read a great many polar adventure stories, from Alastair Maclean's "Ice Station Zebra" and John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" (The Thing) to more recent entries like Matthew Reilly's "Ice Station" and Preston and Childs' "The Ice Limit," and of the lot, I'd have to rank this with Campbell's famous sci-fi action/adventure tale and "The Ice Limit" as the best-written and most memorable - in fact, Dietrich even pays The Thing an early homage in his gripping (or should that be "chilling"?) novel.

Ultimately, this thoroughly engrossing read even manages to be something of an Antarctic war story - the ultimate "cold war," as it were. Don't hesitate to snap it up. And don't forget your long-johns.

Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Cold War
Review: Geologist Jed Lewis took a last-minute detour to Antarctica, as a favor to a friend. Seems Amundsen-Scott base's grand old man, astrophysicist Mickey Moss, may have found a Martian meteorite - and if he has, it could well be worth up to five million dollars. With that kind of money at stake, and a secret that can't last five minutes among twenty-six so close-knit administrators and scientists, it isn't long before the rock disappears...and, one by one, so do the crew of Amundsen-Scott. As if the cash incentive of the possible meteorite isn't enough, one of this year's base members is actually an exceptionally dangerous psychopath - who already has more than one murder to his credit.

This is a tightly-written, deeply involving thriller, part murder mystery, part action-adventure, and all survival story. The characters are memorable and well-drawn, no mean feat given the size of the cast. Dietrich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer for the Seattle Times and a real-life visitor of the famous international Antarctic base, giving his descriptions of living conditions in polar hell a keener edge than mere fiction. The suspense is excellent - though Dietrich could perhaps have made determining the killer's identity more difficult - and the action and the violence hold your attention, throughout.

I've read a great many polar adventure stories, from Alastair Maclean's "Ice Station Zebra" and John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" (The Thing) to more recent entries like Matthew Reilly's "Ice Station" and Preston and Childs' "The Ice Limit," and of the lot, I'd have to rank this with Campbell's famous sci-fi action/adventure tale and "The Ice Limit" as the best-written and most memorable - in fact, Dietrich even pays The Thing an early homage in his gripping (or should that be "chilling"?) novel.

Ultimately, this thoroughly engrossing read even manages to be something of an Antarctic war story - the ultimate "cold war," as it were. Don't hesitate to snap it up. And don't forget your long-johns.

Rating:
Summary: Dark Winter
Review: Jed Lewis, geologist, signs up for the ultimate change of pace and joins the hard-working staff at the Amundsen-Scott Antarctic research base. Not long after, the murders begin--and that's too bad for the quickly-shrinking population, because they are stuck there together for eight months.

The book rides mostly on the enclosed paranoia that infects the base's inhabitants, as their friends--and enemies--start turning up dead in various unpleasant ways. Pre-established rivalries, simmering animosities, and edgy idiosyncrasies (there are some strange people sequestered at the Pole in this tale) all lead an intrepid reader to start trying to make sense of the body count. I tried to be intrepid. But the book's other hook acts as a smokescreen: more and more our main character, Jed Lewis, emerges as the chief suspect. A secret reason has been revealed for his arrival at the Pole--something to do with a potentially valuable object that has been brought up out of the ice, an object that could prompt someone to kill. Jed also has a remarkable talent for happening upon dead people, with nary an alibi to prove he didn't cause the body to be there in the first place.

So is it a smokescreen? As the surviving members of the facility began to gang up on Jed, I found myself wondering if the grand trick of the book would turn out to be that our central character was a homicidal maniac. There is, of course, a trick, though before the killer is revealed there's lots of time to sift the evidence, and pick the murderer out of the crowd. Though noways certain, I'm honest when I say my suspicions had landed on a certain individual before the big revelation, and I was right (a rarity).

I really enjoyed this harrowing stay at an isolated, disintegrating Antarctic base where a cunning killer lurks, but when all is said and done...this book is pretty linear in its plot, and frankly, I'm not sure anything happens here that really sets the story on its head. We have our successive murders at a locale with its own laws, where it's impossible to flee (re: Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None). And we have our puzzle: Who is doing the slaying? (re: any serial killer novel, where the culprit is successful both as killer and as grand, intelligent puppetmaster). The style is terrific, the dialogue is believable, the characters are strong and distinguishable from each other, and the sense of fear and distrust are always present. But I feel that all the above is applied to a routine plot. A solid plot--but a routine, linear plot that is polished up nicely so it sparkles while taking no risks. The ending, particularly, gives the standard unmasking, and action-oriented final confrontation, which exposes this gripping novel as not really a cut above. I am just not able to sit back and give a four or five-star review to a book that relies on such a familiar plot, even though everything supporting it is so splendid.

If you like thrillers, chances are you will like this book quite a lot. But on reflection of the various plot developments, does it really stand up there with the very best?