Frozen Solid by James Tabor
Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:23PM
TChris in James Tabor, Recent Release, Thriller

Published by Ballantine on March 26, 2013

During the first quarter of Frozen Solid, I thought James Tabor was telling an unoriginal story but telling it well. After about a third of the novel, when the plot began to move in new directions, I was hooked on a clever, intelligent story that continued to be well told. Although a bit light in its character development, Frozen Solid is a fun, fast-moving novel that's more imaginative than the stories so commonly told in thrillerworld.

Hallie Leland, a microbiologist with the CDC, travels to a research station at the South Pole to replace a dead scientist who had found something unusual in deep ice-core samples. The scientist's apparent death from a drug overdose becomes suspicious when Hallie stumbles upon evidence of foul play. Eventually there are more deaths, apparently from natural (albeit unlikely) causes, but always involving women. Since Hallie must puzzle out both the cause of the deaths and the identity of the killer, Frozen Solid combines a whodunit with the fast action that characterizes a thriller.

Early in the novel we meet a group of scientists who are trumpeting something called Triage. It soon becomes clear that they are involved in a conspiracy of Ludlumesque proportions. A secondary (but, for the most part, undeveloped) plotline concerns Hallie's lover, Wil, who tells her, just before she leaves for the South Pole, "There are things you don't know about me." The attempt to humanize Hallie by giving her a life is a small (and ineffective) part of the story.

Once it winds up (and it doesn't take long for that to happen), Frozen Solid tells an exciting story. Tension is palpable during the novel's action scenes, particularly when Hallie is diving in frigid waters where hypothermia is just one of the dangers she faces. Some aspects of the novel strain credulity -- Hallie's ability to cheat death on multiple occasions and to fire flares so that they land atop her target with unerring accuracy -- but that's common in modern thrillers.

Hallie is a resourceful heroine with a take-charge attitude. If someone needs to climb down an icy crevasse to save a trapped scientist, she's there to do it. Yet unlike so many action heroes, she isn't a martial arts expert and she doesn't carry a gun. She relies on wits and determination, making her a more interesting protagonist than the big guys who are always fighting their way out of trouble in standard action novels.

Tabor seems to have done his homework before writing Frozen Solid. The description of the polar environment and its effect on the people who work in the research station is convincing. Whether Tabor is explaining carbon dioxide concentrations in the ocean, the mechanics of climbing sheets of ice, or the perils of diving in the Antarctic, his writing reflects solid research.

Apart from a slightly cheesy ending (the kind where all demons are excised and people who hated each other throughout the novel are now joining hands and singing Kumbaya), Frozen Solid is a well-told tale. I haven't read the first Hallie Leland novel but Frozen Solid encourages me to give it a try. 

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