Meltdown

A lethal slick of radioactive waste threatens to cause a modern-day Ice Age, and only Dr. Carol Harmon and her ex-husband, Brock Garner, the marine scientist heroes of Powlik's debut novel, Sea Change, can stop it. Young Inuit father Victor Tablinivik's teeth are falling out and, like many in his small Arctic village, his wife and young son are slowly dying from leukemia. Making his way across the thawing ice floe as he returns from a late spring hunting trip, Victor discovers entire flocks of dying shorebirds and a dead polar bear. Meanwhile, Harmon, a marine bioacoustic expert, stumbles across five dead blue whales trapped in the ice; they turn out to be highly radioactive. Suspecting a clandestine dumping of radioactive waste in the remote Arctic waters, Harmon sends out a call for help to her celebrated marine biologist ex-husband. Embers of old love flame anew as the couple battle evil agents of covert foreign nuclear powers, discover high-level coverups and indulge in a surfeit of high-tech histrionics. Building on his earlier novel, Powlik delivers another exciting read for environmental enthusiasts, Tom Clancy aficionados and others not intimidated by extensive techno-speakDand the novel seems ripe for the plucking for TV or even film production. (Dec.)