Give Me a Cold One!

Okay, maybe wishing for winter in August is a bit premature, but when it is this hot and humid for so long, I find myself longing for much colder weather. Lacking actual cool weather, an icy cold adventure is what I want most. Reading Joel's recent PES blog about all of the great new Scandinavian mysteries made me long for another tale filled with ice, snow and deadly cold.

An old icy favorite of mine (it's from 1963 and we still have it on the shelf!) is Alistair MacLean's Ice Station Zebra. A British meteorological team is trapped on the polar ice cap and their numbers are slowly being killed off. (You can feel the permafrost coating the snow machines.) An oldie but a goodie.

In the more recent Terminal Freeze by Lincoln Child a strange creature is found frozen in the ice at Base Fear. (Don't you love that place name?) Help, the ice is melting and the monster is loose! Maybe it's best to leave sleeping monsters lie?

Isle Royale National Park, on the shore of bitter cold Lake Superior, is the scene of Nevada Barr's book Winter Study. Trapped by a blizzard, with a deadly, eerie, over-sized wolf on the loose, the rangers and scientists may not make it out of the park.

There are so many cold ones to choose from that any frozen blog listing barely cracks the icy surface. But let me give you just one more - 61 Hours - by Lee Child. Our favorite tough guy, Jack Reacher, hitches a ride on a tour bus in the midst of a South Dakota blizzard. With just a light jacket our hero is always cold and that's just the way I want to feel in this hot weather.

What are your favorite icy cold reads for hot summer days?

Posted by Linda K.