The Thief by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

Isaac Bell #5

          The Isaac Bell series celebrates the dramatic changes that were taking place at the turn of the previous century: the telegraph, the airplane, moving pictures. This story revolves around the budding movie industry and the holy grail of "talking" pictures.

          The story starts with Bell foiling the kidnapping or two men off a steamship that is preparing to cross from Europe to America. It is simply a case of Bell being in the right place at the right time. The two men, while grateful for the rescue, are reluctant to share the reason for the kidnapping. Bell, being a Van Dorn detective, determines to keep an eye on them to find out why they are so important.

          As it turns out, they have developed the first effective method for syncing motion and sound on film. They are traveling to America to offer their invention for sale to Thomas Edison. But the German Kaiser wants the invention for himself. He has a plan to use this invention to create propaganda videos aimed at getting America to back them in the approaching hostilities that will lead to WWI.

          The man known as The Acrobat, who masterminded both the kidnapping and the talking picture propaganda scheme, is certainly a worthy opponent for Bell. He is smart, physical, well trained and determined. He nearly succeeds in killing Bell more than once. Of course, Bell nearly succeeds in killing him several times as well.

          The action, the intrigue and the peek into history make this a very enjoyable read. I liked it better than the last installment, The Race [see my review]. Perhaps because I am now familiar with the main and recurring characters, or perhaps because I find these aspects of the history more interesting than the birth of aviation that was the basis of the last story.

          I recommend this book, and for those of you who like turn of the twentieth century history, this series.

Voyager by Diana Gabaldon

          Outlander #3

          Another great book by Diana Gabaldon!  I am so pleased I found this series. I’ve enjoyed every moment of these very long books. Gabaldon has made her way onto my list of favorite authors.

          Voyager is the third book in the Outlander series. After thoroughly enjoying the first two, Outlander and Dragonfly In Amber, [Outlander, Dragonfly In Amber] I was looking forward to this one. In the first book, Claire travels two hundred years back through time and finds herself in Scotland just prior to the Jacobite uprising. While there, she meets, marries and falls in love with Jamie Frasier, a large, handsome charismatic Scot. She tells him that the Scottish forces will be massacred at Culloden Field, and as the battle approaches, she discovers she is pregnant. Jamie sends her back through time on the eve of the battle, intending to go back and die on the field. Claire returns to her own time and bears Jamie’s child.

          In the second book, Claire takes her daughter, Brianna, on a trip to Scotland with the intent of telling her who her biological father is, and attempting to explain the time travel. Claire tells the tale of her love affair with Jamie and of their adventures together. While there, Brianna discovers Jamie Frasier’s grave and Claire realizes for the first time that Jamie did not die at Culloden.

          Now, Claire works to discover where she might find Jamie Frasier twenty years after the battle of Culloden. Through the exhaustive efforts of Brianna and her historian boyfriend, they track down clues that indicate Jamie is working as a printer in Edinburgh.

          Claire gathers what she can and prepares to travel back through the stones to find her one true love. It is wrenching to leave Brianna, but she cannot stay away. She goes back through the stone and begins the trek to the city.

          Upon arriving in Edinburgh, Claire gets directions to the printing house she believes is now owned by Jamie. She sees him and knows she was right to return to him, but is nervous about his reaction.  When he turns around and sees her, he faints dead away! 

          Jamie and Claire then embark on the journey of relearning each other – neither is really the same person they were when they parted twenty years earlier. Their personal journey is paralleled in the book by their physical journey from Scotland to the New World.  It is fun and exciting with twists and turns in both treks that kept me on the edge of my seat. 

          I highly recommend this book.  I would also suggest reading the first two before picking this one up though.

The Columbus Affair by Steve Berry

          I really do enjoy historical fiction, and this is a good example of why. Once again Berry combines lots of real people, places and things with a bit of imagination and comes up with a compelling story.

          In this one, he imagines that Christopher Columbus, the one we have the holiday in October for, is a Jew. And his travels to the New World are really motivated by a search for a place where the Jewish people can live in peace. He is tasked with taking precious Jewish artifacts out of the reach of the Inquisition and finding a new haven for them. He accomplishes this pretty well. The Jews find a haven in Jamaica for over 100 years and the treasure for even longer.

          After hiding the treasure, Columbus chooses one man to guard over it, The Levite. This man is to allow only one other to know the secret location. For some five centuries, the secret is kept safe and the treasure remains secure. The location known to only one man at a time, the information passed on as the current keeper nears the time of his death.

          In the current time, the Levite develops a problem. His son has renounced his religion and heritage, and therefore cannot be a fit guardian.  So the Levite takes the secret, literally, to his grave. He has his granddaughter who is the executer of his estate bury him with a package. In the package is the secret that he could not pass down to his son.

          Israeli radicals determine who the Levite was, and realize he was buried with this package despite it being against orthodox Jewish rules. They develop a plan to retrieve the package, and then the treasure. They plan to return the treasure to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem from whence it was removed millennia ago. And, they hope the return of these items to this sacred location will arouse the Jewish people to a war with the Islamic peoples who now control the location.

          The characters travel all over the globe, plans are created and thwarted and altered. Many forces are in play and no one is who they seem. The treasure is finally found, but only the new Levite controls its destiny.

          I enjoyed this one.  At times I was uncertain who was a good guy and who was a bad guy.  And, in the end it became clear that many people were a little of each. It’s always fun to read the afterward to see exactly which parts of the story are real, which are theory or myth and which came straight out of the author’s imagination.