Dark Winter

A great, tension sustained read set on the Antarctic Scott-Amundsden Research station. A sociopath posing as a psychologist causes disappearances and death of scientists and support staff in order to prove his hypothesis that survival of the fittest and self-preservation are sound world views.

Jed Lewis and Robert Norse are last minute additions to the Antarctic Support team at the Amunsden-Scott base and are among the group that will maintain the base for 8 winter months. The plane that drops Jed takes the summer team away and will be the last contact the base has with "home" for 8 months.

There are 26 beakers (scientists) and station support personnel and Jed has a lot to learn. There is suspicion about why he is there - after all there are no rocks in Antarctica - but he is there to take weather observations related to global warming. The senior beaker, a famed astrophysicist named Mickey Moss, has discovered a meteorite that may be worth millions, and when his body is discovered and the meteorite goes missing, suspicion show more falls on Jed, mainly because of his late arrival at the base. Before long the other murders begin.

I was getting a bit aggravated with this book by the time my Kindle reader was telling me that I had read 30%. Not much seemed to be happening and I had read a lot of scientific trivia and not much thriller/mystery. Things did get better in the second half of the book, I think as the author warmed to his task of writing fiction, and was a little less concentrated on teaching the reader about life at the Pole.

Another reviewer likened it to "ten little Indians at the South Pole" and certainly it is inevitably a variant on a locked room mystery. For the first half of the story at least there is a sub-story revealed, the thoughts or writing of the killer who has actually killed before. This mystery connection was solved about three-quarters of the way through as the identity of the killer was revealed (although I had guessed his identity by then), and then the interest centres on the resolution of the plot. show less

I had read 2 other books by this authorand enjoyed them but, this one was a real disappointment. I had the hardest time getting into it and several times was ready to stop and go on to something else. However, I cannot not finish a book once I've started it. I wanted to find out who the killer was. I do plan to continue with this author.

At America's base at the South Pole, 26 "winterovers" complete the yearly ritual of waving good-bye to the "last plane out," then summon their energies for that season's battle with constant darkness, total isolation, and murderous cold that can dip well beneath 100 degrees below zero. Little does the group guess that in succeeding days and weeks, they'll be tested not just by unimaginable weather extremes, but by a murderer intent on gradually eradicating them.