Date first published	14 March 2013
ISBN Number	978-0-718-17675-4
Page Count	376 h/b
h/b= hardback : p/b= paperback

Storyline

It is 1902, and a bright, inexperienced young man named Isaac Bell, only two years out of his apprenticeship at the Van Dorn Detective Agency, has an urgent message for his boss. Hired in the coal mines, he is witness to a terrible accident. It begins to become clear that the trouble doesn't stop with the men he's looking for. Much bigger stakes are in play.

Little does he know just how big. Given exactly one week to prove his case, Bell quickly finds himself pitted against two of the most ruthless opponents he has ever known, men of staggering ambition and cold-bloodedness.. who are not about to let some wet-behind-the-ears detective stand in the way.

Review

Well so much for the blurb. I found this story slightly strange. This is only the fifth story in the series, and it seems strange to have the need to back fill Bells early career, after all we know very little about his current one.

Bell also appears to be married. Yet in the later books he's dating a woman journalist. I can't remember whether they are the same person, and I'm sorry to say can't be bothered to find out.

When Bell first appeared on the scene it made a change, however, these stories are horribly formulaic. You could argue that the Pitt stories, are, however not to the extent that these stories are. They are almost a 'novel by numbers'. It doesn't help that none of the characters seem to be particularly pleasant, including Bell himself, who seems to be very, very arrogant. Perhaps that it's sign of the times that he was living in, but it doesn't seem likely that he could have survived under cover in the mining towns.

The author also seems to be trying to hard to end the story with a gigantic battle, with the steam boat, however it doesn't really work, and Cussler has already done the Steam boat taking on a bigger/badder enemy, although I'm struggling to remember the story.

The other problem I have is the perpetual racing around the country, which in these novels always seem to take up an in-ordinate amount of time and words, it is almost padding, or a reason for Bell to survive another train crash.

I did feel that the story sort of tailed off, and that the final showdown with Congdon, came as a bit of an after thought.

So what I would call a distinctly average concoction of chases,gun fights and knife fights. This is more like a summer blockbuster movie than a serious novel, and compared to some of the other franchises from Cussler, one of the poorer relations.

Previous	index	next