My Two Cents: DEAD MOUNTAIN by Brad Ricks

In 1959, a team of nine Russian college students set off on a cross-country ski trip across the Ural Mountains in Siberia. They embarked in late January, and were expected to return by mid-February. When that deadline came and passed, rescue crews were dispatched, and made a grim discovery. All nine students were dead, their frozen, mutilated bodies discovered partially clothed along the mountain pass that was eventually renamed for their leader, Igor Dyatlov. They'd died after apparently fleeing in the middle of the night from the relative safety of their tent, which searchers found had been cut open from the inside to allow those within it to escape. Although theories abound as to what might have happened, ranging from an avalanche in the night, to armed bandits, and even UFOs or Bigfoot, no definitive conclusions have ever been reached.

It's against this enigmatic and sinister backdrop that author Brad Ricks sets his latest novel, "Dead Mountain." (The title comes from the literal translation for Kholat Syakhl, the mountain along which Dyatlov and his team had met their untimely fates.)

As the story opens, one-time adrenaline junkie Caleb Forrester reluctantly accepts an invitation to meet with his old college buddy, Damian, who is now a successful television producer. Although once roommates, the two men have fallen out of touch in recent years, and while Caleb expects an awkward reunion, instead he is caught off-guard when Damian asks for his help. Caleb's twin sister, Christy, who'd continued the adventurer life after Caleb retired, has gone missing. While scouting locations for a survival-themed reality competition in Siberia -- at Dyatlov Pass, in fact -- Christy and her entire production team had fallen radio silent, seeming to have disappeared, much as the pass's namesake team more than 70 years earlier.

Caleb's relationship with his sister had grown strained over the years, but even so, he loves Christy and agrees to travel with Damian and a rescue team to try and find out what happened to her. Together with a trio of ex-military American mercenaries, a Russian named Anastasia who serves as their translator, and a rough-hewn smuggler named Karpov, Caleb and Damian set off for the brutal wilds of Siberia.

Needless to say, they find much more than they bargained for.

At first, Caleb holds out naive hope that Christy is still alive, that she was somehow smart and tough enough to have survived whatever misfortune befell her team. But once they reach the isolated campsite where the production crew had been staying, and Caleb sees the destruction to the trailers, generators, and snowmobiles left behind -- torn apart and mangled as if by crazed beasts -- he begins to suspect a grim and heartbreaking truth. Even when Caleb and the gang find themselves face-to-face with the same brutal monsters that had terrorized Christy and the others, he clings desperately to the notion that survival is possible -- not just for him, or even Christy, too, but for all of them.

Needless to say, he's wrong.

This is a fantastic story. What starts out as a frightening creature feature shifts gears and evolves into something much more terrifying. The deeper Caleb digs to try and uncover the truth -- literally, as well as figuratively -- the bigger and more horrific the scope truly becomes. There's plenty of gore, and a pervasive sense of dread that builds steadily and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Just when you think you know where Ricks is leading the story, he takes a sharp turn in the plot and surprises the hell out of you. At one point, he draws from a well-known urban legend/creepypasta about Russian scientists and an experiment gone wrong, but even then, he finds a way to make it feel fresh, new, and unexpected.

Through Ricks's rich and descriptive prose, the reader feels fully immersed in the bleak, unforgiving setting, where the snow is deep, the cold vicious enough to pierce like knives, and the earth and sky meld together in a snow-blurred, colorless haze of gray. The setting mirrors the growing sense of helplessness and despair Caleb feels as the story progresses, the growing, claustrophobic fear that comes from being hunted down, preyed upon. Even the "Dead Mountain," Kholat Syakhl itself, is an malevolent threat, a looming presence that Ricks brings to life and unleashes against those who dare intrude upon its slopes. There are no safe havens here, no plot armor to be found.

"Dead Mountain" delivers a gripping story with a dark, twisted ending that's sure to stick with readers for a long, long time.

"Dead Mountain" is available here.