It's a little startling, at the beginning of Philip K. Allan's The Wolves in Winter, to be reminded that there was a time when the Russians -- or, more properly for the time, Soviets -- were on our side in World War II. While the alliance was at best tenuous, the prevailing "enemy of my enemy" philosophy placed Russia on the side of the European allies -- and, eventually, the United States -- opposing Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.

When the novel begins, Britain is looking for ways to circumvent the Nazis at sea and get much-needed military supplies to Russia. True to type, Soviet Northern Fleet Cmdr. Arseny Golovko is a bit of a jerk, but at least he's not a major part of the story.

As in the preceding novel, Sea of Wolves, this book switches among several primary points of view, including a few familiar characters. Foremost among them are Lt. Leonard Cole, second in command of HMS Protea, a Flower-class corvette serving escort duty in dangerous seas, and Vera Baldwin, a cryptanalyst ("codebreaker") helping to crack Enigma messages intercepted from the German military. Some of the officers and crew of the Protea are also back, including her affable Lt-Cmdr. Paul Garner, along with a few of Vera's fellow analysts.

New characters include intelligence recruits John Cordell and Simon Brown, Norwegian resistance members Karl and Jan Pedersen, and the surprisingly likable Kapitaleutnant Jurgen Bortfeldt, commander of the German submarine U133, who has pretty good taste in American big band music. His rigid second in command, Leutnant zur See Hermann von Fischel, is a more stereotypical Nazi who prefers Wagner.

The British merchant fleet is trying to avoid the German "wolf packs," or submarine squadrons, that tirelessly patrol the seas and send unsuspecting ships to the bottom. Because the German navy has reconfigured its Enigma machines to further complicate their coded messages, intelligence on the U-boats' movements is no longer flowing freely to the British navy escorts, who find themselves sitting ducks when the Luftwaffe flies low over frigid Arctic waters with their bombs and torpedoes, and the dreaded submarines attack from under the waves.

As in Sea of Wolves, Allan provides a clear and dramatic look at life aboard a corvette and a submarine; readers will likely shiver at times at the author's vivid descriptions of the harsh conditions men on both sides of the war suffered at sea -- the fierce cold, the claustrophobic spaces, the fear and uncertainty when you can't see your enemies below the water or avoid them above.

This is a thoroughly absorbing reading experience, with action sequences that will have you on the edge of your seat. Few authors have made it so hard for me to put the book down; sometimes I even carried it with me in the car so I could gain a paragraph or two at traffic lights. That's good writing.

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