Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Plunder of the Sun/David Dodge


One thing I noticed pretty quickly about the HardCase Crime line is that most of the older books they chose to reprint I already owned in the original editions. (Great minds, etc., etc.) Here's another one that was reprinted by HCC that's been on my shelves for many years, unread. I've remedied that, and had a great time doing it.

Al Colby is an American adventurer knocking around South America, and when he's hired to transport a suspicious package from Chile to Peru, you just know things aren't going to go well. They don't, and Colby finds himself plunged into a dangerous hunt for the long-lost treasure of the Incas. Despite what the dust jacket of the 1949 Random House edition claims, PLUNDER OF THE SUN isn't really a murder mystery. As others have said, it's pretty much a straight-ahead adventure story, and a good one. Dodge wrote very smooth, fast-moving prose and had a sure hand with his settings and characters. The only problem I had with the book is a somewhat anticlimactic ending. I've never read anything by him before, but I have at least one more of his novels on my shelves and will be digging it out soon.

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