Under the Ice

by Richard P. Henrick

The Soviet Premier's airplane suddenly veers off course, far above the frozen Canadian wilderness--and shockingly close to a brand new, state-of -the-art NORAD radar installation. Is the Soviet action a simple error or a tactical slap in the face?

A squadron of crack F-15 interceptors and a squad of Canadian Arctic rangers race to the region where the plane has disappeared. Simultaneously, the new Baffin Island radar station goes active, showing NATO's hand, but poised to fend off a global crisis with the highest stakes. The U.S. Naval Arctic Weapons lab provides support with an untested surface scanning fathometer mounted in the hull of the U.S.S. Defiance, skippered by Captain Matt Colter and monitored by the device's inventor, Dr. Laurie Lansing.

The Soviets counter by rushing an awesome Akula class attack submarine in the hand of young Captain Sergei Markova to search for signs of the plane beneath the Canadian pack ice--that is, unless the NATO forces get there first. With all of the technological might of East and West homing in on the pressure point in the icebound Davis Straits, cracks appear in ice and men, and a showdown unfolds with terrible stakes--the fate of humanity itself.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Military Fiction

383 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1989

Reviews

[Christian]

A pretty decent thriller on the desperate race over and under the arctic ice to salvage the black box of the soviet premiers downed airplane. The book gives a nice view on the potentials of submarine warfare. While the author is very talented, a lot of his plot ideas seems to have come straight from Alistair MacLean's Icestation Zebra. And I still believe MacLean's novel to be a couple of notches better than this book, but it's still a good read.

[Andrew A.]

Cold War thriller. I liked the idea and the story, but not the writing. The dialogue continually used language no one would ever use in regular conversation, which made it a much denser read than it needed to be.

[Diane]

So much has changed since this time in history!

[Jason Blythe]

Miserable. But only cost ten cents at Half Price Books.

[Osas]

A pretty good read; though the story takes time to develop, it was an enjoyable thriller all the same. With somewhat boring conversations, it isn't close to perfection.