3.71 AVERAGE

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A seventeenth century pirate,the ruthless Red Ned Eaton, had been very successful plundering the Spanish treasure ships,as a result his ships were too heavy laden with booty and he wanted somewhere to hide his treasure. He kidnaps one of the top architects of the day, a specialist in ecclesiastical architecture to design for him a place to store his hoard, with traps and for which he alone would have a key. The architect designs a “Water Pit”, and the pirate’s crew build it on an island off the Maine Coast, this is no ordinary pit for storing treasure, the pit is filled with ingenious traps worthy of a Egyptian Pyramid…the key to the pit is in a cryptic message, which will allow only Red Ned to recover his treasure, but he dies before he can return to Ragged Island.

After several unsuccessful attempts to retrieve the treasure over the centuries, resulting in deaths and bankruptcies, a heavily backed high tech team led by the obsessed Captain Niedelman, prepare to find the pirate’s hoard estimated to be worth $2 billion. The team has specialists in geology, cryptography, archaeology, and lack nothing in equipment… surely they can defeat the seventeenth century traps. One of the team, Dr Malin Hatch whose brother died looking for the treasure, isn’t so sure.

This book is a real page turner, if you like writers like Michael Crichton or Peter Benchley you’ll probably enjoy this. I did. The captain is as obsessed by the treasure as Captain Ahab is by the white whale in Moby Dick. The main protagonist Dr Malin Hatch is the typical mid thirties hero of these kind of books, clever, fit and with access to most of the information. It is a book with a lot of action and a smattering of psychology. A boy’s adventure for adults.
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mick_travel's review

3.25
adventurous
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
adventurous mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
adventurous funny hopeful informative mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I did NOT read this is German, but that's what Goodreads lists it as. Another good adventure story by Preston and Child. I kept expecting Pendergast to show up, but this is a standalone book about a buried treasure and the lengths to which people will go to attain riches. The characters were a little stereotypical but the book was a quick, enjoyable read.
adventurous challenging dark informative slow-paced

Superrr slow, but has some good lore/plot points! Enjoyed the theme but got lost a bit with the wordiness and extra tidbits.
adventurous challenging mysterious tense
adventurous challenging mysterious tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes