The Assassin

 

The Assassin by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

Like most Clive Cussler fans, I fell in love with his Dirk Pitt novels that became widely popular back in the 1980s. After several Dirk Pitt adventures though, I thought the stories were becoming a tad stale and predictable.  Even though Pitt stories would still lumber off the assembly line, Cussler teamed up with other authors with new multiple book series about different ‘heroes’ other than Dirk Pitt many years later.  In most of these cases, since these books were co-written, the speculation was Cussler had little to do with the books other than stick his name on the front cover to guarantee more sales.  Most of these ‘other’ books weren’t really that great.  The exception, for me anyway, was the Isaac Bell series that Cussler penned with co-author Justin Scott.

The Isaac Bell books take place in the early 1900s and Isaac Bell is the suave, sophisticated, elegant, can’t’-do-wrong-in-a-pinch detective for the Van Dorn Detective Agency. Without going into too much detail, Isaac Bell’s adventures are a far cry from what normal detectives encounter, and we usually find ourselves immersed in a world of murderers, explosions, car chases, and a lot of beautiful women who melt in the presence of Bell.  I really enjoyed the first few Isaac Bell adventures, but I’m now beginning to feel the same way I did after reading the umpteenth Dirk Pitt story.  The whole thing is getting rather predictable and old.  Is it me?  Or has the writing really gone downhill?  If you’re reading this review, don’t go by what I say, read some other reviews as well.

Part of my problem is that I couldn’t really get excited about reading this book once I started.  I usually read about two or three books at a time, and I still mange to finish a book like this in a week or two.  This one took me over two months to finish.  Whatever “other” books I was reading seemed far more interesting, and whenever I would look at this book on my nightstand, it reminded me of a Science Fair project that I needed to complete for school when I was a kid.  I knew I should be paying attention and finishing it, but I simply didn’t have the motivation.

This story revolves around the oil business of the early 1900s.  The famous John D. Rockefeller is actually a character in the book.  When it comes to oil, Mr. Rockefeller’s interest were never anything close to philanthropic, so when some “common oil folk” get swindled, it makes a great premise for a wild story.  The “assassin” in this book is trying to make things right for those who were hurt by Rockefeller; specifically one gent named Bill Matters.  It helps in a story like this when Bill Matters has, not one, but two beautiful adult daughters! One is a newspaper writer and the other is a passionate suffragette who flies around in hot air balloons with giant signs on her balloon promoting her cause.

Now, I cried ‘foul’ because I had a pretty good idea who the ‘assassin’ was from very early on in the story. Yet somewhere in the book, the authors’ use of a pronoun proved be wrong.  However, by the end of the story, it turns out that I was right all along.  So the whole episode for me seemed a bit of lazy writing. I’m not sure if I’m articulating this point very well, so if you’re not following my logic, that’s o.k.  Even had this incident hadn’t happened, I’m not sure it would have shifted my enjoyment of the book up a notch.  In fact, by the time the “truth” is revealed near the end, the whole story seemed a bit preposterous. In fact, I was so discouraged that I basically just skimmed the last fifty pages or so.  I simply didn’t care.

I should also point out that I always like to read these type of books in the order they are written.  Sometimes there are little tidbits that happen in a particular book that carry over into the next book, so if you read them out of order, you may be a tad confused.  For example, the later Dirk Pitt adventures have Dirk marrying his long-time girlfriend, and he even has twin adult children (that he never knew he had) running around solving capers with him.  So if you read a later Dirk Pitt book before an early one, you might get confused with the overall timeline.  This book I read out of order.  I believe this was the 8^th Isaac Bell adventure, and I read it directly after the first three.  Because of this, I think there were things that happened to Bell that may have happened in the books I missed that might have explained certain things that seemed a bit off to me..  So this may have interfered slightly with my enjoyment. 

I’m rating this book probably higher than I normally would.  Again, at this point I honestly can’t state if my problem with my enjoyment was more my own issues as opposed to someone else who might be picking this book up as their first Isaac Bell adventure.   I CAN highly recommend the first three books in the series rather highly however.