U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko is the only law-enforcement officer assigned to Antarctica. Carrie is on the verge of shipping out before the really bad weather hits, when she is confronted with a mysterious murder that sounds like a riddle: how'd a lone corpse find its way to the middle of an ice field, as though dropped from a great height? And what does this have to do with the prologue about a Soviet fighter jet crashing some decades earlier? Along with other snowbound stragglers are a U.N. investigator, some cocky pilots, and a grizzled doctor.