Amenaza En El Artico / Threat in the Artic (Exitos)

by Juris Jurjevics

When three members of the Trudeau Research Center scientific team are murdered under strange circumstances at the onset of an Arctic winter, epidemiologist Jessica Hanley finds her investigation intersecting with the secret mission of a decorated admiral from Moscow who has been assigned to locate a missing submarine. Originally published as The Trudeau Vector.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Horror, Adult

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Paul Weiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thrilling piece of epidemiological detective work in the high Arctic!

The submarine warfare technology of Tom Clancy's HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER; the thrilling epidemiological detective work of Michael Crichton's THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN; the stunning descriptions of breathtakingly beautiful landscape from Barry Lopez's ARCTIC DREAMS; the intimate understanding of the Inuit culture and the Inuktitut language from Canada's Farley Mowat; the deep and abiding concern for the environment in general and global warming in particular that has been showcased around the world by David Suzuki; the clever portrayal of the Canadian political climate from Hugo Award winning sci-fi author Robert Sawyer; and the cold war geopolitical tensions reminiscent of Frederick Forsythe's THE DAY OF THE JACKAL! Quite a powerful eclectic blend, wouldn't you say? And yet, this is precisely what Juris Jurjevics has achieved with his timely political thriller set in the bleak Canadian Arctic Winter THE TRUDEAU VECTOR.

Four staff members of Arctic Research Station Trudeau are found dead close to the polynya where they were conducting their research. Three have obviously been killed by some unknown yet extraordinarily powerful and virulent agent, and the fourth is discovered lying nearby, naked and frozen solid having succumbed to profound hypothermia in the frigid dark depths of an Arctic night. Whether the cause of death is inorganic or organic, man-made or natural, bacterial or viral or even a mutated prion similar to that which causes the dread mad cow disease is not known. A hair-raising night-time parachute insertion drops solo epidemiologist Jessie Hanley into ARS Trudeau to work her well known combination of brute force scientific research coupled with near magical leaps of intuition. The devastating pathogen with an unheard of and completely terrifying 100% mortality rate must be found and controlled!

I just don't understand why this novel is so little known and hasn't vaulted Juris Jurjevics onto the best seller lists. The science is exciting, informative and yet written in language that lay readers will grasp. The brutal physical, technical and personal realities of living in the close confines of an Arctic research environment are portrayed in vivid detail. The epidemiological detective work will have any reader hanging on the edge of their seat. The characters are fully developed and even the romance is warmly realistic without that sense of gratuitous inclusion that one often feels about sex and intimacy in a novel.

A highly recommended page turner that deserves a much, much broader audience.

Paul Weiss

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a highly enjoyably thriller set in the artic involving an American epidemiologist searching for the cause of 4 unexplained deaths during the 6 month winter. The setting is exotic in a very different way from most. Instead of sea and sand with sun and fun there is constant dark, broken only by the constant bright light of stars and the moon, and ice and snow, broken only by very occasional inland polynya, areas of open water.

Set in this extreme cold is the Trudeau Research Station. Four of their workers are dead with horrible symptoms shown on their bodies, their deaths having been unwitnessed. Jessie Hanely is flown and literally dropped in to find the cause. The novel outlines all that occurs.

It's a very good ride. Recommended for those who enjoy a thriller involving medical, environmental, scientific, political, and occasional naval details.

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

My how casually we talk about mass destruction. But really, if science had been presented like this to me in high school, I might have passed sophomore biology the first time.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as part of a personal challenge to clear my oldest BookCrossing books from Mt TBR. I kept putting this one off because of the international espionage aspect even though I like a good thriller. Well, I'm really glad I read it as I enjoyed the epidemiology in the storyline and the Arctic settings. This kept me wanting to turn pages and I enjoyed the twists and turns of the hunt. I was a little disappointed with the ending, but only a little and more around the character writing rather than the resolutions. A good read and now it is finally ready to be shared along after sitting unread for almost two decades! Epidemiology can be more appreciated now at least :)

[Jeannie Mancini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Jessie Hanley, an eccentric hippie-style, world renowned epidemiologist is once again pressed into a dangerous medical crisis by the Center of Disease Control in Los Angeles. Famous for her around the world missions to uncover mysterious deaths that cause epidemics, Jessie is the top scientist on the list to assist in the investigation of four sudden deaths at a Canadian research facility in the Arctic circle. The bodies were found on the ice grossly and unnaturally contorted, horrible frozen screams crystallized on their faces, their eyes were missing. Immediately Jessie is flown to the coldest place on earth only to be parachuted downward to a frozen and frightening wasteland where in the midst of a nightmare from hell, top international scientists are fighting for their lives!

Admiral Georgi Rudenko, ready to retire as one of Russia's finest Navy officers who earned his high rank when performing death defying feats during the Cold war, is suddenly recalled to active duty for a final mission. One of their finest submarines is missing in the area of the Norwegian sea with close to a hundred crew members and a Russian scientist that they had recently picked up from a research station on an island in the Arctic.

While Jessie commandeers in-house volunteers to hasten the process of setting up multiple laboratories and quarantine tents, she realizes soon that her and her fellow scientists are up against something the world has never encountered. Biological? Biohazard? Biowarfare? The arctic research facility is thrown into panic and despair as fear of the unknown haunts each members dreams.

Together with help from the Russians who make a surprise appearance via submarine that pops out of the ice like a breaching whale, the hunt is on for a deadly killing agent that threatens all their lives. The clock is ticking, two more die, harrowing autopsies reveal no answers, and Jessie is forced to brave 40 below temperatures as she braves out onto the ice floes looking for clues.

Juris Jurjevics first suspense novel, The Trudeau Vector, is an intense mystery thriller offering up a blend of espionage and a bioscience mystery that together offers the reader 400 pages of chills and breathtaking scenes full of page-turning macabre and intellectual intrigue. Readers will be totally engaged as they experience high tech arctic survival gadgets, bioscience, the flora, fauna, the stunningly beautiful environment of the Arctic Circle, heart stopping submarine missions, secrets, spies, and yes..... love on the ice!

This author shows talent for creating a well rounded plot, polished writing and well developed characters. The book is often humorous, yet totally horrifying, and presents us a window into how the mind can affect human nature within an atmosphere of strict isolation devoid of sunlight, warmth, people, entertainment, and the cozy comforts of home. I sure would love to see Jessie come back in a series of other science thrillers!! My rating without hesitation is Five Stars!

[Lori · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perfect example of why good editors are essential to good and great books. This a bad book. It had a great story that didn't have the proper plot or characters to sustain it. As a woman, I was completely embarrassed by Jessie Hanley. Hands down one of the absolute worst female characters I've ever had the displeasure of encountering in a book. I hope no one who read this thinks professionals behave that unprofessionally, erratically, and immaturely and can still retain credibility and their job.I wanted to smack her and kick her back to the white trash curb she came from every page she appeared on. The Russian characters were the only ones who came across as being smart- the rest of them? Ridiculous. The story itself was inconsistent in both pace and tone. Overloaded with unnecessary details that make for fun reading in science and archeology digests but not in a political/scientific thriller. So tired of all the fiction out there that truly has potential to be good and can't even achieve mediocrity due to lack of editing which first and foremost is the writer's responsibility but still also very much the responsibility of the publishing house.

[Kathy Dobronyi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely read science adventure novels, but could not put this one down until I finished it. Juris Jurjevics introduced me to the alien world of the Arctic, complete with scientific exploration and specialized needs developed by man and nature for survival in this harsh demanding climate. He simplified the complex while presenting an intriguing mystery. How did 3 scientists suddenly die, their bodies contorted in pain and their eyes gone? Why did another strip himself of all protections against the unforgiving elements of an Arctic winter to freeze to death within minutes? Why did they die and who will solve this problem that involves a romance, vestiges of the Cold War, epidemiology, and the fragile worlds of human egos and the Arctic?

[Kyra · Rating 1 out of 5]

The mystery was reasonably interesting, and some of the writing was promising - especially the Russian bits - but basically this was a piece of crap book with cardboard characters, some totally ludicrous and implausible plot twists and a lot of data skimmed from Wikipedia stuffed into the cracks. BIG cracks.

[Irisa Roze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! If you can find it at your local library or online, I highly recommend. A definite page-turner for me. Originally I selected it simply because the author is Latvian. I'm so very glad I read it.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bioterror and political intrigue isn't normally my thing, but this one is well-researched and the book moves along at a swift pace. Science Guy was much amused by the shout-out to Zeiss microscopes.

[Simon Conway · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well imagined and deftly written arctic thriller that wears its research lightly but slightly too much exposition at the end.

[Mark Woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

Out in the middle of the Arctic, five scientists die of a mysterious pathogen that kills them in excruciating agony. Dr. Jessica Hanley is sent out to discover what killed them in this tense scientific thriller, but soon discovers there is more going on than at first meets the eye.
At the same time, In Moscow, Admiral Rudenko of the Russian navy is sent out to discover what has happened to a Russian sub that has broken all contact whilst in foreign waters, but what he discovers will also lead him to the Arctic.

This is a very clever thriller in the same vein of Gorky Park and Day of the Jackal mixed with a heady dose of The Andromeda Strain and Miss Smilla’s feeling for snow.
I have read That a few people described the characters as cardboard, and didn’t like the main character, but I thought none of this and found it to be a very well conceived book that I couldn’t put down.
Definitely not one to miss, this was a truly enjoyable read and certainly kept me guessing right up until the end.

[Neil Arrowsmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The storyline was very promising and parts of the book were good. The last quarter of the book I read with a good deal of enthusiasm.
Not a bad ending that as it began to unfold had you guessing a little.
The characters didn’t really connect with me. As a reader you want to feel the journey with the main characters and I just didn’t feel anything toward Hanley or Uli or Dee, to name just three significant characters. There seemed to be too many characters that were fairly innocuous and they took away what could have been a greater emphasis on the characters involved in the plot. Simon King for example was an utterly pointless character with no impact to the story.
I found the Russian characters to be be pretty flakey and not given enough of the storyline to have a real political and espionage hit to it.
I also felt the romance between Jack and Hanley to be unnecessary and again allowed another plot to emerge that diluted the main concept of the book.

[B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this book, and I liked the concept of the book, but I'm not a fan of the main investigator, Hanley, or of the fact that the author doesn't take procedure into account, making everything less believable. This book also seemed particularly dry, which suggests to me that something either may have been lost in translation or that you had to read the other Hanley books in order to be able to appreciate this one. All in all it was rather a let down for me. I was expecting more from the book.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazingly intriguing thriller, taking place at a international scientific laboratory in the Canadian Arctic. 3 scientists have been killed, a fourth seems to have killed himself, and the cause is (of course) quite mysterious. There's international intrigue, love and loss, a lot of scientific detail that is quite interesting - a really fascinating, well written thriller. With an ending that of course is surprising, as it is meant to be.

[Bára Jelínková · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5* napínavý, ale občas trochu moc ukecaný, především pasáže odehrávající se v Rusku. Ale jinak celkem fajn čtení o pátrání po neznámém smrtícím viru, což právě teď, v době koronavirové pandemie, dostává úplně jiné rozměry 🙂

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jurjevic's three books are well worth reading. They make me want more. but he died last year. Alas. They are tightly written, two set in Vietnam and one (this one) in the Arctic. The two set in Vietnam are five-star books. This one might be.

[Tricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not normally my kind of book but I liked it. It was about some mysterious deaths at an Arctic Research Station. A epidemiologist is sent to investigate.

I liked the intrigue as they tried to uncover the vector for the disease. Throw into it some Russian old war spy stuff and a few dead bodies and the narrative starts to move along very quickly. It was fairly fast paced.

I would recommend it.

[Sheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is very slow but the story is still good.

[Sandy Carmichael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riveting story---lots of cultural input, medical info and suspense.

[Chrisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written thriller, with the adequate lenght. It is interesting and smart! I recommend it as a book for the beach!

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written, if sometimes contrived story about a scientist trying to find the cause of a series of deaths at an international lab above the arctic circle. Tense, fast read.

[Sally Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this scientifically-driven thriller (not my usual go-to) but found the Russian characters a bit one-note and the ending rushed. Otherwise, a very worthwhile, engaging read.

[Robin Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some great moments and setting. But WAY too long.

[JACKIE FRENCH · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick wrap-up ending after a glorious journey to the Arctic and a reminder of tense Russian relations. Loved it!

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great SF story, interesting characters, international intrigue, thrilling.

[John Vandike · Rating 5 out of 5]

A re-read of a thriller from about 20 years ago. Hints of Crichton from a story/thriller perspective, but heavily leavened with a dose of realistic science makes for a great novel.

[Jacqueline Bos - Stolwijk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soms best lastig te volgen door de details, maar wel een boek wat je maar door wil lezen.

[rabbitprincess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initial impressions: Really nifty-sounding storyline. I am a sucker for thrillers, especially when they happen in Canada (or at least the Arctic). And man, I don't remember noticing this when I bought the book, but there are dead people with their PUPILS removed! Ew! I hope there aren't any eyeball-extraction scenes, because that stuff makes me ill.

Overall, the back cover makes it sound really good. Here's hoping the writing lives up to the hype.


There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the writing, while decent, was quite clunky in the beginning, especially some of the dialogue between the protagonist and her son. Jessie Hanley also had a way with obnoxious, grating one-liners that were supposed to make her seem witty but did not succeed. Also, the author wrote "CSIS" (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) with a hyphen, like so: "C-SIS". Not only wrong, but also annoying.

Also, sex scenes that occur with little to no warning are not something I particularly enjoy in my books, because it's really embarrassing to find those in a book one is reading on the bus. But I digress.

On to the good: it was indeed an original story, and I enjoyed the huge Canadian presence -- a scene set in Ottawa made me very happy indeed. Having an Inuk character playing such a prominent role at Trudeau (and a positive role at that) was also excellent. Actually, the whole cast was pretty diverse (perhaps deliberately so), and there didn't seem to be many obvious stereotypes, at least not that I noticed. Reading on the bus does take one's attention away from the finer details.

And while I am glad that Canada's research stations were so technologically advanced in the world of this book, there is no way we would EVER have anything that nice in reality. :P (Or perhaps I am just being cynical.)

As for the ending, yes, it did wrap up most loose ends and at a breakneck pace. However, the pacing was a bit uneven. It lagged at a few points, mostly with the Hanley family subplot about which I did not care very much. Jurjevics' strength is his scientific/medical thriller writing and not so much the heartwarming family stuff.

So to sum up, a decent read, but probably not going to be read again. Still, I am glad that at least I gave it a shot and saw it through.

[LJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE TRUDEAU VECTOR (Suspense-Canada-Cont) – G
Jurjevics, Juris – 1st book
Viking, 2006 – Hardcover
Dr. Jessica Hanley, an American epidemiologist, has been asked to Trudeau Research Center at the Arctic Circle. Four of the scientists have been found on the ice—dead in a way no one can identify what may have killed them. The fear is of a fast-moving epidemic that must be identified and stopped. But what is a Russian Submarine looking for?
*** I had some problems with this book. There was very little depth or appeal to the characters. The once I actually found most interesting was the Russian Admiral. There is a romantic relationship that starts almost as soon as the characters meet and, although I’m not a parent, I did have trouble believing the protagonist would have gone off to an inaccessible location for five months considering what was going on at home. There were also strengths. The sense of place and the environment in which the story was set was excellent. The suspense built nicely throughout the story although I also felt the ending was a bit of a let down. With a bit of Alistair McClain, in the descriptions of the Artic and the involvement of the Russian Navy, and a bit of Tess Gerritsen in the medical information and suspense, Juris has put together a decent, but flawed, debut book.