'Ice Limit' a little older, but worth a read | Books

Two-authors-in-one pen a chilly, high-seas thriller

Could you possibly have missed this?

Okay, sometimes I just have to jump in and tell you about my faves. Enter one of my favorite authors: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Really! Together they make one great, not-to-be-missed author.

“Ice Limit” is one of their older ones. It came out in 2000, so you should be able to find it pretty easily.

Since I had visited this part of the world last summer when I read “Over the Edge of the World,” it was interesting to return to the far southern latitudes in these pages.

An enormous meteorite has been found on Isla Desolation at the southern tip of South America. One of the world’s richest men, Palmer Lloyd, who desperately wants this rock for his private collection, hires a crack team headed by former Special Forces op Eli Glinn, who now heads a company specializing in impossible tasks. They sign on to brave the high winds and extreme weather. Glinn prides himself on having so many contingency plans that his operations are, in his words, “risk-free.”

Things begin to go wrong immediately, with several mysterious deaths aboard the ship, a disguised oil tanker with – you guessed it – a beautiful, blond female captain.

The intervention of a tenacious Chilean destroyer captain who is mistrustful of their “scientific expedition” throws another dark shadow on the job, as well. Then, the meteorite weighs far more than it should for its size and is made of a material with deadly properties that have never been seen on Earth. High adventure reigns as the oil tanker is chased by the destroyer into the severe weather of the “Screaming Sixties.” (You look it up. I did!).

This one was so good I actually felt the cold

Go on an adventure to the ends of the earth-. Read a book.

Merry Titus, who reviews books for the Reporter, is a King County Library System employee at Covington Library.

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