Beyond the Ice Limit

Beyond the Ice Limit is the fourth book in the Gideon Crew series and the sequel to the 2000 standalone novel The Ice Limit. It was released on May 17, 2016, with a free preview of the first eleven chapters available electronically on March 22, 2016. It is the twenty-third full-length Preston-Child collaboration.

Plot Summary
"That thing is growing again. We must destroy it. The time to act is now...

With these words begins Gideon Crew's latest, most dangerous, most high-stakes assignment yet. Failure will mean nothing short of the end of humankind on earth.

Five years ago, the mysterious and inscrutable head of Effective Engineering Solutions, Eli Glinn, led a mission to recover a gigantic meteorite–the largest ever discovered–from a remote island off the coast of South America. The mission ended in disaster when their ship, the Rolvaag, foundered in a vicious storm in the Antarctic waters and broke apart, sinking–along with its unique cargo–to the ocean floor. One hundred and eight crew members perished, and Eli Glinn was left paralyzed.

But this was not all. The tragedy revealed something truly terrifying: the meteorite they tried to retrieve was not, in fact, simply a rock. Instead, it was a complex organism from the deep reaches of space.

Now, that organism has implanted itself in the sea bed two miles below the surface-and it is growing. If it is not destroyed, the planet will be doomed. There is only one hope: for Glinn and his team to annihilate it, a task which requires Gideon's expertise with nuclear weapons. But as Gideon and his colleagues soon discover, the 'meteorite' has a mind of its own–and it has no intention of going quietly..."

-Publisher's synopsis

Returning Characters

 * Gideon Crew
 * Eli Glinn
 * Manuel Garza
 * Patrick Brambell
 * Palmer Lloyd
 * Sam McFarlane

Continuity

 * A metafictional version of the book appeared in Still Life with Crows in the possession of Corrie Swanson–thirteen years before its actual publication. A sequel, Ice Limit III: Return to Cape Horn, made an appearance in Dance of Death.
 * This is the fourth book to have an in-universe counterpart, following the appearances of Relic, Reliquary, and Thunderhead as books written by Bill Smithback.