The Chase |
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Clive Cussler
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Pages: 416 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 0718152794
Pub: Michael Joseph Ltd
Pub date: 2007-11-01
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 52696
Reader Reviews:
Not the normal Cussler (0/1 people found this helpful)
Bought the book at Heathrow Airport running for a plane. Did not read the cover notes. This one is not a Dirk Pitt story. Instead it is about a private detective in 1906 and the San Francisco earthquake. It's all very old fashioned, slow, needlessly violent, and boring. A poor read. You have been warned.
Different for Cussler (in a good way !!) (0/0 people found this helpful)
I have read all of the previous Clive Cussler novels and some of his co-authored stuff. I really used to enjoy the early Dirk Pitt stories, but I felt that towards the end Cussler went off a bit (maybe my tastes changed - who knows). As the Dirk Pitt plot-line had expired I was interested to see what he had created now. I must say that I found the book very interesting. Cussler's attention to detail was spot-on and the story made the book "unputdownable". The plot line is in a similar vein to one of his earlier Dirk Pitt novels "Night Probe" but with a clever twist. I must presume that due to the way the book has been written that this is a "one-off", unless he jumps back in time to cover the further adventures of the hero "Issac Bell". In all - a good read in the classic Cussler style.
Snakes on a train (0/0 people found this helpful)
I've always been a fan of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt and NUMA Files adventures, and THE CHASE is the same kind of story. There's a larger-than-life hero who faces impossible challenges and is viciously injured but gets right up. There are fast cars, a discreet liaison with a beautiful woman, loyal associates, and big transportation (in this case trains rather than boats). Oh, and a sociopathic villain.
All that's to the good. Of course we also have writing from the Hardy Boys school of literature and fantastic plot elements. That's no surprise and if you're a fan, you just read around it. Here's an example of an overloaded sentence from the beginning of Chapter 15:
"Cromwell's chauffeur drove the 1906 Rolls-Royce Brougham, made by the London coach maker Barker, with its six-cylinder, thirty-horsepower engine, from the garage to the front of the palatial Nob Hill mansion Cromwell had designed himself and constructed from white marble blocks cut and hauled by railroad from a quarry in Colorado."
Hmmm ... anyone got a red pencil?
The hero is one Isaac Bell, an independently wealthy private detective. The villain is a bank robber-murderer known as "the Butcher Bandit." Bell, through hot detective work and breathtaking good luck, gets on the trail of the Bandit by page 168 (of 404). The rest of the book -- the better half -- involves a lot of fast driving, a locomotive race, some shooting and robbing, and the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Oh, and of course a satisfactory ending.
THE CHASE does have a structural device that kicks it up a notch. While the story takes place in 1906, the book opens and closes with a 1950 underwater salvage operation in a large Montana lake. This is reminiscent of James Cameron's 1997 movie TITANIC, and was a very nice touch.
Cussler's at his best with the action scenes, and THE CHASE has some epic action. The train scenes really are playing to his strength. The story is according to formula but the formula works: familiar and therefore safe style, combined with wild action. This is a very satisfactory offering from Cussler and if you like this kind of book, you'll probably enjoy it as much as I did.
Linda Bulger, 2008
Page-turning pleasure (1/1 people found this helpful)
Clive has done a great job here. Right from the start his new characters draw you in to the story in a classic good versus evil adventure. This story keeps you turning the pages until the early hours. Enjoy!
Improves as it goes on. (1/1 people found this helpful)
I am someone who buys Clives books the moment they come out. This one is a very different style to his previous ones and once I got over the disappointment of this I actually enjoyed the book more and more as I got into it. He has proved his versatility as a writer.
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Categories
Amazon.co.uk places this book into the following categories:
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> C -> Cussler, Clive
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> General
Books -> Refinements -> Language (feature_browse-bin) -> English
Books -> Refinements -> Age (feature_two_browse-bin)
Books -> Refinements -> Format (binding_browse-bin) -> Hardcover
Books -> Refinements -> Condition (condition-type)