cover image Beyond the Ice Limit: A Gideon Crew Novel

Beyond the Ice Limit: A Gideon Crew Novel

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Grand Central, $27 (384p) ISBN 978-1-4555-2586-7

Preston and Child's exciting fourth Gideon Crew novel (after 2014's The Lost Island) satisfactorily resolves the cliffhanger with which they ended their 2000 thriller, The Ice Limit. Previously, eccentric billionaire Palmer Lloyd learned that the largest meteorite ever known had been found on an uninhabited island at the very tip of South America. The expedition he funded to retrieve it, under the leadership of Eli Glinn of Effective Engineering Solutions, ended with the sinking of the ship meant to bring the highly unusual meteorite back to New York City. Most of the expedition members perished, and the meteorite sank to the ocean floor. Six years later, Crew, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, agrees to accompany a second mission with the objective of destroying the thing with a nuke. That challenge is heightened when evidence emerges that it's actually a sentient alien. The bestselling authors maintain suspense throughout, and they throw in some original ideas that offset some familiar action tropes. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (May)