The Iceman by P.T. Deutermann

Published by St. Martin's Press on August 21, 2018

I’m a sucker for submarine novels. I probably read them as I would a horror novel because I would be terrified to be in a submarine, particularly when torpedoes and depth charges are trying to sink it. I’ve rarely met a submarine novel I didn’t like, and I liked The Iceman more than most.

Malachai Stormes is a World War II submarine commander who has a well-deserved reputation for being aggressively crazy when it comes to killing Japanese soldiers and sailors. His insubordinate attitude doesn’t sit well with all of his superiors, but they let him slide as long as he keeps sinking enemy ships. His latest success earned him a promotion and a bigger sub in the Pacific. He takes command in Australia and is quickly dispatched to Guadalcanal with orders about torpedoes that the reader expects him to ignore. One of the book’s themes is the shoddy nature of American torpedo manufacturing and the tendency of submarine captains to ignore senseless orders that assure their torpedo use will be ineffective.

Malachai takes his sub, the Firefish, on a number of missions, sinking tankers and destroyers and shooting an occasional hole in an aircraft carrier. The missions are tense and exciting, as they should be in a submarine novel. Malachai is determined to be innovative, as he demonstrates (to his crew’s horror) by staying on the surface to attack tankers so that he can shoot them with the deck guns. He also has to deal with a nasty fire (never a good thing on a craft that is underwater and filled with explosives) and with a crisis at the novel’s end.

Apart from dazzling submarine warfare scenes, the novel builds interest through Malachai’s interactions with his superiors, his XO, and a woman in Perth. His superiors are unhappy with his willingness to criticize their orders, although they can’t do much about it given his record of success. His XO can’t handle Malachai’s bloodthirsty intensity, particularly when he sinks a Japanese seaplane and then orders the deaths of the survivors so that they can’t reveal their knowledge of the sub attack if they happen to be rescued. The woman in Perth, on the other hand, enjoys Malachai’s company despite his cold-hearted, controlling, and isolated nature.

The Iceman combines suspense with realistic images of war and a believable submarine captain who was damaged by life even before the war threatened to strip him of his remaining humanity. The love story holds no surprises, but it nicely balances the war story. I could complain about some scenes that might be a bit too predictable (has there ever been a fictional submarine captain who didn’t take his sub below its rated depth to test its true crush depth?), but frankly, I enjoyed every underwater scene, predictable or not. Thriller fans, war story fans, and particularly submarine fiction fans should get a kick out of The Iceman.

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