Ice Reich

The terrifically quirky start of a speed-read action adventure in exotic locales with fascinating scientific facts dips too soon into breathless romance to achieve a clear voice. The result: a cinematically layered novel with an identity crisis. Bush pilot Owen Hart, an early failed Antarctic expedition member, is recruited by German diplomat Otto Kohl as pilot/consultant for a prewar 1938 Nazi expedition (sponsored by Goring himself) to Antarctica in search of the natural resources needed for the war effort. Hart falls for SS officer Jurgen Drexler's girlfriend, biologist Greta Heinz, and the dramatic potential of a trip on an air carrier, facing down Norwegian whalers amid an iceberg-bobbing sea, is undermined by the adolescent antics that he and Jurgen perform for Greta's benefit. The discovery of a deadly plague bacterium and a nearby organism with antibiotic effects leads to Hart's separation from the Nazis and his capture and forced return to the island with Jurgen and Greta near the war's end to retrieve the plague germ as a last-ditch super weapon to save the Reich. With Hart's smarts, Greta's pluck and the help of Antarctica's denizens, they strive to outwit a submarine full of stormtroopers in the desperate finale. Dietrich won a Pulitzer for his science writing on the Exxon Valdez episode; any prize for his fiction, however, are still on ice. Audio rights to Time Warner. (Oct.)