Vernon Frolick, a criminal prosecutor in British Columbia, tackles the biography of Chuck Fipke, the man who proved that there were commercial diamonds in Canada.

Fipke is a driven man. Working in unbelievably remote areas of New Guinea, Africa, Brazil, and the Canadian Arctic, he has survived encounters with everything from intestinal parasites to lions. He once had to barter his clothes in order to escape from a war party of Stone Age warriors (a primitive tribe in New Guinea who still use Stone Age technology), and he is the only person known to have recovered from cerebral malaria. He is also an extraordinarily successful exploration geologist, which has cost him his marriage but makes for an exciting story.

Frolick mines this remarkable material to the full. Fipke’s struggle to prove diamonds exist in the Northwest Territories and to keep his work secret from the competition reads like an enthralling mystery novel. Frolick does a good job of providing enough background, whether it is historical or geological, for the reader to understand what is happening, but never so much that it interferes with the pace of the story. Every potentially deadly encounter, whether with armed soldiers or disease-carrying insects, is thrilling and illustrates Fipke’s drive and philosophy. However, the excitement, especially in the first half of the book, creates a problem – it becomes commonplace through repetition. This is compounded by Frolick’s occasional tendency to overdramatize, as when the First World War is described as six years of “venom and paralysis.”

The reader learns a lot about Fipke, his determination, and how difficult he must have been to live with. But his own voice never comes through clearly. It is impossible to escape Frolick telling the story. Nevertheless, Fire into Ice will appeal to the general reader both as an adventure story and as the accessible tale behind Canada’s newborn diamond industry.