You can read [Victim of the Aurora] on several levels, all of them entertaining and provocative. It is an adventure story, the tale of an expedition to Antarctica in the years just before World War I. It is a mystery in the classic British style, complete with a murder most foul, a large cast of plausible suspects, and a narrator who fits together all the pieces of the puzzle. And it is a thoughtful novel about the corruption of innocence, the unending burden of guilt, and the perpetuation of official deceit….

[Keneally's] depiction of Edwardian innocence and stuffiness crashing against the Antartic void is superb, as is the manner in which each member of the expedition is pressed to bear the burdens of his own past. The introduction of the theme of homosexuality into a small world of men alone is natural and sensitively handled. And considering that...