Frozen Solid

Tabor follows his routine first Hallie Leland thriller, 2012’s The Deep Zone, with a taut page-turner set in Antarctica. Toward the end of the Antarctic summer, Leland flies in to a South Pole research station, where she’s to dive beneath the ice to recover an extremophile—a life-form that exists under conditions inimical to most life. The extremophile, code-named Vishnu, can metabolize carbon dioxide and thus potentially stop climate change. Leland has a short window to carry out the dangerous assignment, since flights out of the South Pole will soon be suspended for months. Meanwhile, members of the station’s scientific team have begun spewing blood, sometimes fatally, for no apparent reason. With no one to trust and with evidence that foul play is afoot, Leland must battle on multiple fronts. Tabor’s not the first genre writer to take advantage of the forbidding conditions at the South Pole, but few have done so to better effect. Agent: Ethan Ellenberg, Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency. (Mar.)