Books like Cold Earth

Much to my surprise I quite enjoyed this novel, despite a very unsatisfactory ending. The premise is a simple one. Six people head off on a dig to Greenland in the artic summer. They go to a very isolated spot where there were viking settlements which disappeared (plague or massacre, we are never entirely certain). The six are a varied and suitably irritating bunch, one of whom is a complete novice (a literature student doing a thesis). They have limited contact with the outside world and are there for the brief summer with enough food (unappetising) to last them. The leader is an obsessive with very clear rules about how the dig should be run. The literature student appears neurotic and starts to see/hear the ghosts of previous residents who do not like the graves being disturbed. Towards the end it seems she is probably more sane and realistic than the rest. In the background as they leave a flu pandemic appears to be starting.We hear from each of the characters in letter form (some a lot more than the others). The letter idea works ok. Each of the characters is annoying in their own way and are a pretty typical bunch for this sort of story.There is a good deal of detail about the environment they are in (not surprising as the author has written a good deal about polar exploration) and about food; real and imagined, as they become more hungry (again not surprising as the author has also written about food in literature). There were some interesting literary links (Villette for instance) with nineteenth century literature and some parallels with the books mentioned in the story. All this was good fun, not especially creepy; however the ending was a definite let down. This may be because it wasn't long enough and could have been fleshed out.