Whiteout ('Tis the season to be reading...)

'Tis the season to be reading and, as you may remember from the previous years, it means that I will suggest books for you to read during your Christmas holidays, or maybe ask for Santa to put under your Christmas tree. Today's suggestion (and the first this year) does not have so much to with the Season as it as with the season. I long for a proper winter and what's more wintery than Antarctica. So the book I suggest is Whiteout by Greg Rucka, illustrated by Steve Lieber. I blogged about it and its sequel last week, I thought it was just as fitting for a Christmas read. In this graphic novel the continent is pure winter nightmareland. Be that as it may, the protagonist, U.S. marshal and tomboy (you can even say butch) Carrie Stetko, has made the Ice (as it is called) her home. Then someone gets murdered. You have blood on snow, isolation, blizzard, violence, a thousand ways to die a gruesome death, a good deal of international intrigues and a dash of espionage to give it some weight as well as authenticity, there is a lot to love here. Whiteout is not only a great thriller, it's an intelligent one.