In the forbidding climate of the Arctic Circle, metal cracks like glass, rubber shatters, plastic crumbles, and world famous scientists are dying horrific deaths - and no one knows why.

As an international team of scientists at the spectacular Trudeau Research Centre prepare for six months of unrelenting Arctic winter, three of their colleagues are found dead on the ice, their eyes missing, their bodies contorted in ghastly, unnatural positions, hardened from the inside out.

Cause of death: unknown.

Dr Jessica Hanley, a talented and unorthodox American epidemiologist, is summoned to the isolated station to investigate the cause of these grisly deaths before the unthinkable becomes reality.

Halfway around the world in Moscow, Admiral Rudenko, well past retirement age, is summoned to locate a submarine that has suddenly and inexplicably disappeared in the waters he once knew well - the Norwegian fjords. Ideally suited to this sensitive assignment and conveniently expendable Rudenko must locate and retrieve this rogue ship at any cost.

The die is cast. Their missions will cross paths, and bring them up against hazards much bigger than microbes - scientific megalomania, lingering cold war tensions, world- threatening environmental toxins - all unfolding in the unforgiving extremes of the Arctic.

A thriller that superbly depicts the precarious, volatile area where science and global politics can clash with disastrous results, The Trudeau Vector is reminiscent of the classic suspense of Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal and the terrifying realism of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain. Compelling, brilliantly crafted and terrifyingly convincing, readers cannot help but fall under its captivating spell and ask themselves, Could this really happen?