Sir Howard Stringer runs Sony, but he doesn’t try to go to a recording studio and hit the pop charts by covering the greatest hits of Tiny Tim. Hugh Hefner runs Playboy magazine, but he has never attempted to pose as the Playmate of the Month. Well, not as far as we know.

But Juris Jurjevics, who started and still runs the excellent publishing house Soho Press, has gone to the other side and written a thriller, “The Trudeau Vector” (Viking, 400 pages, $24.95). Talk about amazing! Running a small- to medium-sized publishing firm is no small thing. I’ve done it and, believe me, there is no such thing as resting on the seventh day, or any day, for that matter.

Soho Press publishes a modest-sized but exceptionally distinguished list of mystery fiction. The wonderful Peter Lovesey is on the list, and so is Cara Black, with her blind Parisian detective. Rebecca Pawel, whose “Death of a Nationalist” won an Edgar for best first mystery, is on the list, and so is Qiu Xiaolong, who was nominated for the best first mystery of 2000 with “Death of a Red Heroine.” The hard-boiled cop writer, John Westermann, is published by Soho, and so are Patricia Carlon, Janwillem van de Wetering, and Magdalen Nabb, among others.

Soho Press is not just a publisher of mysteries, but I don’t care about the other books – though Mr. Jurjevics clearly does. What I want to know is how this eminent publisher was able to find the time and energy to write a thriller. Not just any thriller, but a whopper. It’s not only the size that impresses – though “The Trudeau Vector’s” 400 pages are very full – it’s the amount of arcane, yet relentlessly fascinating, material squeezed between the covers.

Set at the Arctic Circle, “The Trudeau Vector” opens at a research facility at the coldest place in the world. Three scientists are discovered in the middle of a vast expanse of ice, their frozen bodies contorted at impossible angles, their faces etched in masks of incalculable terror, the pupils of their eyes vanished. Not far from the bodies, another scientist appears to have walked into the minus-40 degree temperature and removed his clothes. The intense cold cracked the lenses of his eyeglasses as it quickly and mercilessly froze him into a block of ice.

Who, or what, could conceivably have caused these macabre deaths, a thousand miles from anywhere?

The world’s foremost epidemiologist, leaving her 10-year-old son behind, is flown to the region to try to answer that question. With a brilliant team of medical experts and research scientists at hand, and others linked via computer, the search begins. Soon, it becomes clear the cause is not any known virus or bacterium, and a muted panic suffuses the tight-knit research team.

Most of this thriller is edge-of-the seat reading, pages being hurriedly turned to know what happens next. But there is a slow spot while all the analysis – and I mean all the analysis – is described. And, for my taste, there might have been a little too much about the process of slicing up cadavers and weighing lungs and livers (thought it’s important to understand that I am a total weenie who practically faints at the sight of blood and avoided watching “ER” as if my sanity depended on it).

Meanwhile, as all this activity takes place above ground, a Russian submarine is reported missing. Since it was below Norwegian fjords, violating international waters, the Russians cannot seek outside help and must retrieve the missing vessel themselves from these deep, dark, frigid waters. Sending another submarine to rescue would cause a major incident among the Norwegians and their allies, and may cause an investigation to determine the nature of the lost sub’s mission.

The questions to ask are why that submarine was there and what was it doing.The Cold War, after all, is over – over, that is, for all but a handful of dedicated old Soviets.

Many years before, during the height of the tension between the world’s two great powers, the Soviets had recognized that American scientific and military superiority would make their own nuclear submarines useless in a confrontation, as every one of them had been identified and tracked by the American Navy.

One clever admiral, however, had hit upon the brilliant plan to install nuclear warheads on rockets beneath the surface of the nearly impenetrable Arctic waters. At a great depth, and with no moving parts, they were utterly undetectable.

With the Cold War lost, and the implosion of the Soviet empire, the weapons were no longer needed, and there was no money to remove them. Quietly, they remained in place, still pointed at targets in America.

In “The Trudeau Vector,” as the parallel events above the ice and below it converge, scientific and political motives likewise meet to pose an environmental threat of an almost incomprehensible magnitude. I don’t know how much of “The Trudeau Vector” is is really possible. I guess I don’t want to know. If it all really were true, I’d be so scared I’d want to move to another planet.

Usually, when I say that, I mean California, but in this case it wouldn’t do the job.