Great review of The Atlas Fracture by Joseph Souza, author of the zombie thrillers, The Rewakening and Darpocalypse.

“The Atlas Fracture, a technological thriller by Tim Queeney, takes the reader to a faraway place most people have little knowledge of: the Antarctic. Our hero, Perry, is somewhat of a misfortunate chap with a troubled personal history and frigid upbringing. Lonely and alone, due to the requirements of his covert assignments, Perry seeks above all to reconnect with his estranged son now living in L.A. He misses Lucas so much that he’ll do just about anything to be with the boy, a son he finds difficult to connect with on account of his own shortcomings. But as always he’ll meet up with him just after the next assignment is completed.

“So what better place to reconnect with humanity than the Antarctic, where a secretive conglomerate of scientists, Muslims and thugs gather in disharmony to achieve a singular goal? Although each team’s ultimate goal is a shared endeavor, their motives are as disparate as their ideologies.

“The Atlas Fracture is a clever plot device, and throwing poor Perry into this glaciated oasis obviously requires that he snuggle up with a body, and the warmer and softer the body the better. And that he does by the mysterious pull of romantic chemistry. Or maybe it’s just the bitter cold that brings them together. But not before mayhem, intrigue and duplicity divides the various members of the team into their ideological cliques. What turns out to be an expedition in search of sub-glacial, deadly organisms soon becomes a red herring for a more malevolent plan of action.

“Queeney is a competent and confident writer. His ability to describe this frozen tundra in meticulous detail impressed this reader. Equally impressive was his description of the technological processes involved in drilling through ancient ice, not to mention glacier history and shift patterns. I didn’t expect to learn much, but I found the information on oceanic currents, Soviets artillery shells, and sub-glacial lakes to also be rather interesting topics, topics that I rarely if ever come across. Queeney has done his research so strap on your seatbelt and jump aboard this novel at your own risk.

“The Atlas Fracture is a compelling thriller that hums right along and skillfully integrates science, intrigue and ideological extremes. My only quibble was that the book was a bit too compact and could have used more fleshing. Perry Helion is an intriguing character with enough heft to carry the day, and I wanted more of him. A more expansive approach to the novel would have enriched and better informed the reader. But let there be no doubt, The Atlas Fracture possesses enough velocity and mass to heat up the room. Snuggle up with an electric blanket and put the thermostat on high while reading this book because you won’t put it down until your hands are frostbitten to the bone.

Get The Atlas Fracture at Amazon. 

If the terrorists succeed in their evil plan, Britain and the rest of Europe will suffer much worse winter weather than they are still slogging through this spring. The attackers’ effort to cause ecological disaster in the Antarctic  will plunge Europe into years of long deadly winters. Can Perry stop them in time?

Read the whole story in The Atlas Fracture!

The new Perry Helion thriller has its own page on Whizbuzz! So buzz on over and check it out. You can read the description (or just buy the book!), check out my links and can use a variety of tools to spread the word on social media: FaceBook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Digg.

Cool.

An MK Ultra file authorizing the use of LSD for mind control experiments

The CIA program referred to in my latest thriller, The Atlas Fracture, as “MK Ultra” did exist. It was, according to Wikipedia, “…the code name of a U.S. Government covert research operation experimenting in the behavioral engineering of humans (mind control) through the CIA’s Scientific Intelligence Division.” MK Ultra was an outgrowth of the Korean War, when U.S. POWs were subjected to attempts at psychological conditioning by their Communist jailers. When the POWs returned to the U.S. some officials feared that the Soviets had developed successful techniques of mind control — and that the U.S. was far behind. There was concern that the Soviets were capable of creating sleeper agents who could be “woken up” with key words and made to undertake missions. John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate dramatized these fears of Communist assassins secretly seeded into the highest levels of American society.

CIA efforts to catch up with the suspected Soviet advantage included administering LSD to witting and unwitting test subjects as a method of mind control. In one famous incident in November 1953, Dr. Frank Olson, an army biochemist was given LSD without his knowledge. He died after falling 10 stories from a room in the Statler Hotel in New York City. The official NYPD investigation claimed Olson committed suicide. Some believe Olson planned to expose the CIA’s MK Ultra program and was murdered.

The use of LSD for mind control was only one aspect of MK Ultra, which reportedly included more than 150 research efforts. The CIA “officially” closed down the program in 1973. Was it really ended? I’ve always been fascinated by the program and have often wondered if it went “underground” after 1973, hidden from Congressional oversight and from the public.

In The Atlas Fracture, we learn that Dr. Taylor Crandee was working for the CIA on a new version of MK Ultra in the 1980s. This effort, using techniques of genetic engineering, went awry when Crandee went too far in New York City and killed some of his test subjects. Crandee is a firm believer that humans are “stuck” on a developmental plateau. He’s convinced he needs to get the human race onto the next level, to transform into a new, improved life form.

Yes, Dr. Crandee definitely has some serious issues!

A four-wheeled robot cart is driving around Antarctica helping scientists study ice by avoiding crevasse dangers. Dubbed Yeti, the robot uses GPS and can map an area to inform researchers where the cracks and crevasses are located. Wonder if Yeti could detect the Atlas Fracture?

Dr. Crandee and Dr. Nouri certainly would have liked to have a Yeti robot while the terrorist team was descending the crevasse-scared glacier onto the Ross Ice Shelf. Certainly Josmen probably wished they had one!

Researchers used a mini-sub to motor around the subglacial Lake Whillans. The sub was equipped with a video camera and a fiber optic link to the surface. One of the big issues involved in probing these subglacial lakes is trying to do it without contaminating the lake with microcrobes from the surface. So presumably that was an issue here. The video, however, makes no mention of efforts to sterilize the mini-sub. Maybe the scientists just skipped the whole idea as being too much of a problem(!).  After all, they were way down in Antarctica, who would know?

Scientists of the WISSARD expedition to drill into the subglacial Lake Whillans in Antarctica have now confirmed that early tests show there is biological life — bacteria and other microbes — living in the lake far under the Antarctic ice sheet. Further testing is required to determine what the microbes are and if they could pose a threat to those organisms living on the surface(!).

Seems like some of the scariest elements of my upcoming thriller The Atlas Fracture are proving alarmingly possible!

Image courtesy Dr. Alberto Behar, JPL/ASU

A recent article in the New York Times Science section described an American expedition to drill into a lake beneath the Antarctic ice cap. This effort neatly parallels the effort by the character Dr. Taylor Crandee in my novel The Atlas Fracture to drill into a subglacial lake called Lake Donatella. By the way, I promise the real-life Antarctic lake drilling effort is not a publicity stunt to promote my book (although the timing is excellent!).

The actual expedition is called the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project. It will drill down into Lake Whillans, a body of liquid water a half a mile below the surface of the Antarctic ice. The plan is to bring up water samples and analyze then on the spot for signs of microbial life. There could be strange, unusual and even dangerous forms of bacteria, viruses and who knows what else. 

The WISSARD expedition had to travel more than 625 miles across the Ross Ice Shelf to reach the location of the subglacial lake. Drilling through ice requires some gear, so more than 13 Sno-cats and tractors were used to haul equipment and to the site.

In The Atlas Fracture, Dr. Crandee and his team use a similar hot water drill to melt their way into a lake located at the edge of the TransAntarctic Mountains. Dr. Crandee is convinced that volcanic heat from the mountains is providing a perfect environment for exotic microbial life. When he and his team succeed in bringing samples of this biologically rich water to the surface, the results are not what most in the team expect, however, and the effects felt all the way to Washington, D.C.

Watch for The Atlas Fracture, the next installment in the Perry Helion thriller series, available soon.