Dark Winter [Paperback]

William Dietrich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2002

At the US base at the South Pole, 26 researchers and staff members complete the yearly ritual of waving goodbye to the last plane out, and then summon their energies for the rigors of the winter ahead. Little does the group know that they'll be tested not just by the weather, but by a murderer.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

William Dietrich, a science and environment journalist who's used his Antarctic experience in previously published fiction (Ice Reich) as well as features for the Seattle Times, heads south again in this thriller whose beautifully limned landscapes and detailed description of "wintering over" at the South Pole are almost too good for such pedestrian plotting.

Geologist Jed Lewis joins the Antarctic Support Team at the last minute, and his position as an outsider in a group of 26 "beakers" (scientists) and support personnel is clear even before the first in a series of mysterious and macabre deaths occurs. 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 falls on Jed, for no good reason other than his late arrival at the base. Jed becomes the scapegoat for everyone's suspicions, fears, and paranoia, and the pot is stirred by the team psychologist, ostensibly sent to the pole to learn how people behave (or don't) in the isolated, dangerous environment, as close a simulacrum of the conditions humans will face in outer space as science can devise. Unfortunately, Dietrich's series of asides to the reader give the rest of the story away, leaving his beautiful descriptions of the polar dark and nuts-and-bolts explanations of living and working in the world's most rigorous climate the only reasons to finish this ultimately unsatisfying novel. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The title of Dietrich's third novel (after Getting Back) refers to the season that hero/geologist Jed Lewis and some 20-odd fellow scientists and staff spend at Amundsen-Scott research base, at the South Pole. During that winter, several of them are murdered. Whodunit? That question drives the plot, marking this book as a mystery disguised as a thriller. And that's a problem, because, as evidenced here, Dietrich's flair for mystery is about as nil as the temperatures his characters suffer at the Pole. Dietrich once won a Pulitzer for science and environmental writing, however, and his talent for describing the awesome polarscape and its effect on human psychology and physiology is visible through his transparent plotting and characterizations. Lewis visits the Pole overtly to track its weather, but covertly to study a meteorite found by pioneering polar astrophysicist Mickey Moss. The meteorite, Lewis determines at first glance, may be Martian and worth millions. Then the rock is stolen and Moss is murdered and Lewis, one of two newcomers to the Pole (the other is a psychologist), emerges as chief suspect. To save his reputation and, eventually, his skin, Lewis hunts for the real killer. Further deaths ensue, each predictably putting Lewis in greater peril. This novel reads as if it were plotted via computer software, and any reader who fails to finger the genuine murderer (a clich‚ of a mad scientist) long before Lewis does should be sentenced to read Hardy Boys novels for the next 10 years. Still, Dietrich evokes well the implacability of the Pole, and his detailings of daily life at the base ring with authenticity. If only they graced a nonfiction book, rather than this misshapen Popsicle of a novel. (Apr. 24)Forecast: Never mind its faults, this is the kind of thriller that, down the road, will fly off racks as a mass-market paperback. Blurbs from Larry Bond and P.T. Deutermann will help keep it airborne.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd (May 1, 2002)
• ISBN-10: 0732270774
• ISBN-13: 978-0732270773
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

More About the Author

I'm a novelist and non-fiction author, with a series on American adventurer Ethan Gage in the Napoleonic era that has sold into 31 languages. My newest novel, a Nazi thriller, is "Blood of the Reich."

I began my writing career as a newspaper reporter in 1973, published my first non-fiction book, "The Final Forest," in 1992, and my first fiction, "Ice Reich," in 1998, completing a first draft on an Antarctic research ship. I share a Pulitzer for covering the Exxon Valdez oil spill while at the Seattle Times and then taught for five years at Western Washington University's Huxley College of the Environment. While there I authored "Green Fire: A History of Huxley College."

My work at HarperCollins has been historical fiction that ranges from the Roman Empire to my latest tale that ranges from Germany to Washington's Cascade Mountains to Tibet. My Ethan Gage series starts with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt ("Napoleon's Pyramids") and continues on to the Holy Land, America's Great Lakes frontier, the Barbary Pirates of North Africa and (coming) the Caribbean and Haiti. I've also done thrillers for Warner Books (Ice Reich, Getting Back, and Dark Winter, now available again as E-books on Amazon) and non-fiction about the Pacific Northwest.

My award-winning first non-fiction book, "The Final Forest," was just reissued by University of Washington Press. For any Twilight fans, it's a book about Forks, Washington, written well before the vampire craze: it gives you the real Forks.

Research for my novels has taken me to the Arctic, Antarctic, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Australia, Sicily, Greece, Paris, Britain, Hungary, Tibet...hey, someone's got to do it. I've traveled on a sailboat in the South Pacific, landed on an aircraft carrier, flown in a B-52, visited the South Pole, and been terrified flying with the Blue Angels.

As a journalist, I was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, won National Science Foundation fellowships to Antarctica, and speak frequently on environmental issues. I've covered Congress, the eruption of Mount St. Helens, the environment, science, social issues - even the military. I've traveled frequently for my writing, but live in the Pacific Northwest where I was born. I'm married, with two grown children.

I live in a house looking out at the San Juan Islands, surrounded by fir, cedar, and hemlock, and sometimes get to watch bald eagles while I'm writing. Connecting with readers is one of life's biggest thrills.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 26 Little Penguins, May 3, 2001

By 

John W. Bates "jaydubyah" (Americus, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dark Winter (Paperback)

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ultimate Cold War, December 22, 2002

By 

Bruce Rux (Aurora, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dark Winter (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Chilling, January 24, 2002

By 

Untouchable (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dark Winter (Paperback)

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.