Saturday, May 16, 2009

The Chase - Book Review

The Chase
By Clive Cussler
Berkeley Books 2007

I had to read this book judt to satify my curiosity. This is not a book from any one of Cussler's previous series. This is an entirely new book, but not necessarily different.

This book takes place in the year 1906, in and around San Francisco. other related events take place in Colorado, Utah and the western states. If you can remember your history, what big event took place in 1906?

There are two guys - the bad guy is called the Butcher Bandit and the good guy is called Issac Bell. Issac is a detective and he has spent the last 2 years tracking down the Butcher Bandit.

The Butcher Bandit robs banks and cold bloodedly kills everyone in the bank at the time he robs it and any other witnesses who can potentially ID or describe him.

Issac and his team of detctivs start asking questions and manage to find two people who did see what happenbed and who were not killed.

From there it was a long chase - literally - for Isaac to track down the bandit. Everything culminates down to he chase - a long chase by train from San Franciso on the day of the 1906 earthquake up to the remote parts of Montana whre the bandit planned to escape to Canada and live out his days free and rich.

Thw weather and the gography of Montana plays a part in preventing that from happening.

44 years later the train is dug up from its watery grave and it is finally confirmed that the Buthcer bandit died on that day and the money was still safe in the boxes.

I enjoyed this story very much - just as much as I do the Dirk Pitt and Kurt Austin stories.

This story istold in exactly the same style as Cussler is well known for. He even introuduces two familiar names as bit players. This had me confused for a few minutes as I tried toi figure out why the names Cussler and Leigh Hunt were being used.

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