The Thief

The Thief – by Clive Cussler

Clive Cussler’s Isaac Bell novels (co-written with Justin Scott) have brought a new level of excitement to me that I felt died quite some time ago with the Dirk Pitt novels.  I felt that Cussler’s Dirk Pitt was a class A adventure hero for the first dozen books or so, but after he got married and started involving his twin adult children into the newer novels, the stories lost something for my tastes. Cussler has co-authored many different series of books with many different authors, and most don’t do much for me.  Isaac Bell is the exception.

Like Dirk Pitt, Isaac Bell is a swashbuckling lady’s hero of a guy. He’s a private detective working for the Van Dorn Detective Agency around the 1910s. The fact that these books take place 100 years or so in the past is kind of what makes them so refreshing. This detail adds quite a few elements that help separate Bell from Pitt (something that Cussler’s ‘NUMA Files’ books couldn’t do).  Also, it probably goes without saying, but Isaac Bell can do no wrong.  He’s handsome, smart, can hold his own in a fight, while all managing to be quite the gentleman.  He’s also fabulously wealthy due to an inheritance, so he’s constantly flicking out $10 gold pieces to strangers as the Easter Bunny would toss candy to children.  Yes, Isaac Bell is a tad unbelievable, but that’s what great stories are supposed to do; allow the reader to suspend their disbelief and enjoy the ride.

To be fair though, after five installments now of Bell (only the 4^th I’ve read), even this formula feels a bit tedious at times.  The plot is quite well-thought out and interesting. It seems as though an inventor has figured out a way to produce motion pictures where viewers can see the action AND clearly hear the action and dialogue as well!  It might seem as though this a bit trivial, but this technology was unheard of in the 1910s and, to be honest, many thought unnecessary.  Well, it seems as though Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany sees this idea as a masterful way to inject propaganda on the masses. Such a tool could be used for marketing purposes that can help Germany conquer the world!

An inventor that has a prototype of this device is nearly kidnapped by some German thugs on a ship bound to America from England. Since Isaac Bell is on the ship and thwarts the crime, Bell becomes heavily involved.  The fact that his sweetheart (whom he hopes to soon wed) is ‘in the picture business’ herself, only adds to the story. It’s quite nice that the reader gets a healthy primer on motion pictures and the business as it existed during its infancy. We even get to meet such notables as Thomas Edison and D.W. Griffith. 

Still, though, once the plot has thickened and the action starts to cripple the capers, I found myself losing interest. I’ve just seen and read all of this so many times before. There’s also a high level of unbelievability in many of the scenes.  Now, I’ve already mentioned that Bell is pretty ‘unbelievable’, but we’re talking about a larger than life character.  What I didn’t like in this book where times when people ‘knew they were being watched’ because of a feeling they had. Or the fact that the Van Dorn Detective agency seemed to have hundreds of detectives scattered all over the globe that were all being called in at a moment’s notice to somehow drop everything in order to help Isaac Bell.

Still, though, the book was mostly fun to read. Whenever an author only has one type of book that they write, you really can’t be surprised if you find yourself not as excited as when the author first started writing these books more than 40 years prior.