The Winter Over by Matthew Iden

The Shackleton South Pole Research Facility hosts about 150 people during the summer, mid-November to mid-February.  Only about forty stay for the nine winter months, mid-February to mid-November.  The population includes scientists and support staff only, all of whom are carefully selected for their skill sets and only after rigorous psychological testing.  The winter over period is grueling given four full months of complete darkness and four plus more of twilight only and outdoor temperatures as low as 100 degrees below zero Fahrenheit—a reminder that “Antarctica wants to kill you.”  Consequently, the station attracts some odd but hardy souls.

Cass Jennings is a thirty something mechanical engineer who signed on to Shackleton to forget her minor role in an industrial accident at a previous job that killed and/or injured several people.  Her introverted personality fits well for the long hours in isolation of detailed tasks required to maintain the station’s ground transportation equipment.  She is surprised one day, just as winter over was about to begin, to be asked to accompany a search crew sent out from the post to look for a missing co-worker.  The apparent runaway is found dead in the snow a couple miles away.  The body without proper examination is quickly loaded on the last plane out of the season.  Most everyone knew the victim and can’t believe in a suicide scenario.

A couple weeks later the heat goes out in the main living area and the temperature drops to below freezing in just a couple hours.  Management assures everyone that the furnaces will be fixed soon but no one knows why the main furnaces and the backup system both failed at once.  Plus, no one can find the lead engineer assigned to maintain the heating system.  Then the lights go out and panic sets in, revealing ugly personality traits in the station inhabitants.  Fortunately, the lights and heat suddenly come back on before permanent physical damage is done—but the troops are now restless and suspicious.

Is there some type of psychological experiment going on?  Are they being used like rats in cage to study human behavior?  Who of their forty knows about the experiment and is controlling events and observing the outcome?  At what point does panic take over and it’s every man for himself?  Is it better to freeze to death in fear of being killed by a crazed co-worker or freeze to death walking to a Russian station thirty miles away?

I am a big fan of Matthew Iden’s Marty Singer series and for that reason decided to give his stand-alone work a try.  His writing does not disappoint and as much background is necessary, his descriptive prose encompasses a great deal of the book.  But I could not warm up (pardon the pun) to the subject matter.  Winter is my least favorite season, I detest short daylight days, and extreme cold is a challenge for even the younger set.  Further, I couldn’t relate to the characters and with a plot that has been done so many times before, I struggled to finish this one.  For me this was once again a reminder of how narrow my interests truly are.  Please, Mr. Iden, write more Marty Singer books.