THE TRUDEAU VECTOR

In some ways this excellent thriller is a throw-back to the good/bad old days of the Cold War. The principal setting is a multinational research station in the Arctic where, in the opening pages, three scientists out on the ice succumb to an agonising and instantaneous death, produced by ... well, by what?

The hunt for the bug is the backbone of this confident and consistently gripping book. But even more baffling than the three deaths, a fourth member of the group has stripped himself and perished of exposure while a fifth  -  a Russian woman  -  has already been taken off by a nuclear submarine, all of whose crew will shortly die in a similar manner. There are two strands which converge only towards the end of The Trudeau Vector. One is the desperate hunt to discover what caused the scientists’ deaths, led by US epidemiologist Dr Jesse Hanley  -  a maverick scientist who is literally parachuted into the research base at the beginning of the six month-long Arctic winter.

The other narrative line concerns the investigation from the Russian end. The Arctic sub is discovered in a Norwegian fjord and Admiral Rudenko together with his protege Captain Nemerov are despatched firstly to retrieve or destroy the submarine, and then to track down the cause of the mass deaths on board. The characterisation of the Russians, and the asides about intelligence, are reminiscent of Len Deighton while the Arctic setting recalls Maclean’s Ice Station Zebra and the bug-hunt has echoes of Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.

But the book is very much of the moment: there is some uncomfortable detail about global warming and the nuclear legacy of the Cold War. Also, first-time novelist Jurjevics includes plenty of information on what it’s like, physically and emotionally, to live through half a year of darkness, as well as snippets about Inuit culture and the rigorous requirements for surviving in such an extreme environment. On top of all this, The Trudeau Vector provides a murder mystery which is resolved in proper fashion in the closing pages. A bit too much altogether, perhaps, and it’s true that some characters aren’t much more than name-checked while the scientific explanations tend to speed by. These are quibbles, though. Highly recommended.