A century after Scott's doomed expedition, one woman ventures under the Antarctic ice. The discovery of Captain Scott's body in the Antarctic in 1912 started a global obsession with him as a man and an explorer. But a central mystery remains -- why did he and his companions remain during their last ten days in a tent just 11 miles from the safety of their food and fuel depot? Birdie Bowers, an infamously secretive painter, is a woman with a dead man's name: Henry "Birdie" Bowers was one of Scott's companions. A century after his death, she is determined to discover what really happened to him. On her way to view some of the relics from Scott's tent, she collapses and is rescued by Adam, a bored computer expert–who falls in love with her so completely that he agrees to travel with her to the Antarctic to discover the site of Scott's tent, now encased beneath 30 yards of ice. Dead Men tells the story of two journeys. One is of Scott's tragic exploration of the world's coldest continent; the other is of self-discovery and passion in the present day. A debut that ranks with the best of Sarah Waters or Scarlett Thomas, Dead Men is a novel about obsession, life, and death, and the redemptive power of love.



Richard Pierce was born in 1960 and has lived in 21 different places since. He was educated in Germany and England. Dead Men is his debut novel.