FROZEN SOLID

I haven’t read a lot of thrillers, but if this is what they are like … let me read more!

Scientist Hallie Leland is sent to the South Pole to continue the research that was being done by a collegue, who died under mysterious circumstances. Leland witnesses two suspicious deaths and uncovers horrendous news of her friends’ death, which puts her on alert as anyone at the pole could be a potential murderer.

Author James Tabor slowly, skillfully unravels a plot that grows and grows and becomes something much bigger and more devasting as we learn about it. This is truly masterful plotting and writing. Tabor teases the reader and informs the reader in just the right doses to keep us wanting to read the next chapter.

But Tabor has also managed to create real, interesting, likeable characters. Hallie Leland is a perfect heroine. Smart, wise, careful, and fit … with a dash of recklessness, and just a bit of good fortune thrown her, she is someone who doesn’t need much rescuing, but when she does, you know she’s given it her all. I believed in Hallie at every turn. When she did something that might, in a lesser writer’s hands, seem too-good-to-be-true, it was believeable because we were informed how she knew to make the choices she did. Unlike some of the other mysteries I’ve read lately, in which the main characters survived by pure luck at every turn, Hallie Leland was a character who created her own luck.

I was totally drawn in by the characters and the story. I felt it was real, that this was a true story being told, and not just a work of fiction — that takes some doing!

I look forward to reading other Hallie Leland and James Tabor stories.

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