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The Wrecker by Clive
Cussler
"The Isaac Bell Novels" is a new hit series by "one of the greatest
adventure novelists of our time" (imdb), Clive Cussler. The Wrecker
is the sequel to the successful first Isaac Bell novel, titled The Chase. (The
next release in the series is scheduled for June 1, 2010.)
A detective by the name of Isaac Bell represents the main character in The
Wrecker. Bell is as athletic and fearless as James Bond and as
intellectually brilliant as Sherlock Holmes.
As an independently wealthy heir to a Boston banking family, Isaac Bell pursues his
detective investigations with a fury born out of an obsession and passion for justice
rather than the need to make a living.
In The Wrecker, Isaac Bell gets hired to stop a saboteur
targeting the Southern Pacific Railroad, threatening to financially "derail" the
mega-corporation as they push to build a new and expensive cutoff track that will greatly
decrease traveling time between the northern and southern portions of the American West
Coast.
Unbeknownst to all until the very end of the book, The Wrecker is a regular member of the
inner circles of Southern Pacific Railroad president Osgood Hennessy, even courting the
railroad baron's "unspeakably beautiful" daughter Lillian. He's a formidable
adversary, perhaps as brilliant as Isaac Bell himself.
The agenda of the Wrecker is to seize control of the Southern Pacific Railroad through
various dummy corporations he has put in place, which will help him capture the fallout
from Southern Pacific's impending bankruptcy. Not only that but it appears he plans to
eventually to control the entire United States railroad system, the greatest source of
billionaire wealth in America at the turn of the last century.
Notorious as an avid automobile enthusiast, one reason why Clive Cussler may have picked
the early 1900's as the setting for his new series may well have been to give him an
opportunity to write about car chases in classic automobiles from the turn of the last
century.
The Wrecker features the 1907 Model 35 Thomas Flyer,
winner of the 1908 New York to Paris race, as well as a Packard Grey Wolf, a Bugatti Type
41 Royale, and Isaac Bell's own Locomobile.
Clive Cussler is a man of many passions, one of the best known and most obvious being his
love of the ocean, as evidenced by his countless action novels revolving in and around
water. But the fact that he has chosen to live in Colorado, far from the any great body of
water, suggests that he also loves the rugged, arid and mountainous landscapes of the
American West.
Through The Wrecker, we get a glimpse of this other side
of Cussler, the one that loves the arid mountainous landscapes of the American West. And
it's an enthusiasm that shines through with unmitigated contagiousness. The new Isaac Bell
series may well help give birth to a whole new generation of Western enthusiasts, as well
as spark great excitement in many old ones. With all due respect to the previous Clive
Cussler series, his Isaac Bell stories may top them all.
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