The days are lengthening and the temperature warming, so what better time to journey as far south as possible during winter? RS Burnett’s Whiteout (HarperCollins) follows Rachael on a solo Antarctic expedition. She’s already dealing with temperatures of -69C, weeks with no company and endless night (“She felt like she was drowning in it, as if the darkness was leaking into her little hut, ready to overwhelm her at any moment”). Then the radio and satellite phones cut out, and she hears a BBC World Service broadcast from London. “This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons… the number of casualties and the extent of the damage are not yet known.” Rachael may, she thinks, “be one of the last people alive on Earth”. When her hut burns down, she is forced to embark on a likely hopeless trek across the dark and frozen continent.
Survival stories are my favourite sort of thriller, and Whiteout, set in the most inhospitable place on the planet, certainly piles on the danger (along with the chills). I wasn’t totally convinced by Rachael’s reasons for being in Antarctica in the first place, but once you accept her Very Important Scientific Mission and lean into the string of disasters she keeps having to confront, it is tons of fun.
