Sharon Bolton (The Craftsman; Dead Woman Walking) often opens her thrillers with a scene that makes it hard to stop reading, and The Split is no different. Glaciologist Felicity Lloyd is stationed on the remote Antarctic island of South Georgia to study the decline of ice, but she's also hiding from a violent man, Freddie, who will literally go to the ends of the earth to find her. The island's tourist season is wrapping up but there's one more boat due to arrive--and Freddie's name is on the passenger list. Felicity packs emergency supplies and goes on the run, in a brutal environment that could kill her before Freddie gets to her.
Back in Cambridge, England, where Felicity is from, her former therapist, Joe, discovers shocking information about Freddie and races to South Georgia also to search for Felicity, before someone ends up dead.
One of Bolton's signatures is setting her story in a distinctive environment, and South Georgia's glaciers, subzero winds and frigid waters become menacing characters, ones without logic or compassion, always threatening to kill at a moment's notice. Bolton's descriptions of setting and people are equally vivid: "A tear zigzags down the elderly woman's cheek. Her face is so wrinkled it can't flow in a vertical line." Felicity is another of Bolton's resourceful heroines, even while suffering from blackouts and memory loss. Some plot twists are predictable--the title is a giveaway--but Bolton's tight pacing and complex characters will take readers on a riveting adventure across a landscape as breathtaking as it is deadly. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd