The Chilling, Riley James

This was one of those fortuitous picks from the library (I know I should be attending to the visible from space TBR here, but something about this book appealed when I heard a whisper about it, and sometimes giving into a little bit of temptation is... good for morale). Anyway, I saw this and thought it sounded just the thing for a bit of late night reading. Proved to be exactly that, kept me awake and reading, and finding excuses the day after to keep reading.

Based around MacPherson Station in Antarctica (which I think is fictitious but don't take my word for anything geographical), Australian scientist Kit Bitterfeld is on her way there for her first, and highly coveted, winter research position when the ship they are on gets a distress call from another vessel in the area. By the time they get to it, the distressed vessel is on fire, and the crew has vanished, apart from one lone survivor, found in a very odd location, who it turns out can't remember who he is or what happened.

Eventually, he's identified as geophysicist Nick Coltheart, and whilst this might be Kit Bitterfeld's first ever trip to Antarctica, and with minimal medical training (she's a dentist after all) even she can work out there's something odd about his memory loss, and something even more odd about goings on at the base.

Obviously THE CHILLING is going to have the feel of a locked room mystery, granted a very big locked room, but there's a closed in feeling partly because of the location, and mostly because of the weather in this story, that makes it feel claustrophobic, and downright creepy at times. Creepy also because of the increasingly odd behaviour of fellow expeditioners, and the story of Coltheart which has some gaps you could do wheelies on a snowmobile in. That thread runs alongside the battle for survival of the crew of the abandoned vessel, and the sheer terror and difficulties of trying to move around in a landscape that's ice on water, with limited visibility, and no landmarks. 

It's a good, solid, combination of characters and their personal stories (Bitterfield's background is an interesting one - a dentist who works in Forensic Dentistry, escaping a bad divorce from an even worse husband, in Antarctica to assist with a study of seals - I mean what's unusual about all of that...). Whilst she does hold a lot of the focus, there's enough about Coltheart's background to make you go hmmm a lot, and there are others there to worry about also. All the characters are deftly moved around in a plot that is nicely twisty, with a few major threads, all of which are played out even-handedly. The sense of place is obviously overwhelming, and it works, you can feel the cold, the isolation, and the difficulties the ice and snow create for everyday living. It also helps that the weather is a threat, as is whatever is going on with Coltheart, what will happen to the crew lost out their on the ice (and not necessarily known about), and a bunch of other things weird at the base itself.

It sounds like a lot, but it's not in the reading. THE CHILLING gallops along at a great pace, the switches between plot points are well timed, and the sense of place and environment crystal, coldly clear.