The Race

 

 

The Race – by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

This just might be the last Clive Cussler novel I read for a very long time.  As good as they are, they’re basically all the same.  Cussler is mainly known for his Dirk Pitt novels.  The first 8 or 10 I read were great, but they soon became redundant.  Sometime in the 1990s, Cussler branched out with other authors and wrote other series as well.  The Kurt Austin ones come to mind.  Those, like the Pitt novels wore thin after a while.

When Cussler (along with Justin Scott) introduced the Isaac Bell novels, these were a bit of a breath of fresh air.  Bell is a detective living at the turn of the twentieth century.  Like Pitt and Austin, Bell can do no wrong.  Not only is he athletic and brilliant, he’s also a big charmer with the ladies and always seems to be where the action is; whether the action is trains running off a track or banks being blown up.  Isaac Bell is the fearless hero who always prevails.  Again, though, after several of these books under your belt, they just seem to grow old and the stories become less exciting.

The main attraction for this novel is the newfangled gadget for quick transportation known as the airplane.   A cross country race is in the works, and everyone’s favorite is “America’s Sweetheart” Josephine Frost. Women pilots were almost nonexistent in 1910, so it’s no surprise that she quickly builds up a massive fan following.  There’s even a song written about her.  Well, the problem here is that she is the ex-wife of Harry Frost; one of the scariest criminals in the country.  Harry wants his ex-wife, along with her alleged lover, dead.   So Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn Detective agency is called in to protect her, and hopefully capture the infamous Harry Frost.  All of this, mind you, with the “race” in progress.

So the race starts in New York City.  Since this was over a century ago, aircraft couldn’t feasibly get from one coast to the other in mere hours.  So this race will last days if not weeks.  So there are plenty of pit stops in places like Chicago and Fort Worth etc.  Which means plenty of opportunities for Harry and his cronies to help take his revenge on Josephine.  Bell, of course, is there every step of the way.  So far, so good, but situations begin to unfold that are highly unbelievable.  We’re supposed to discount these events as fantasy and let ourselves be entertained, but this isn’t always easy.

Some of the more preposterous examples: It seems like every city in the United States have a plethora of Van Dorn detectives the can be massively dispersed at a moment’s notice to help out Bell wherever he happens to be.  Then we’re supposed to believe that the villain can take several bullets in his body, but survive due to a newly invented item called a Bullet Proof Vest.  Later, we meet two Italian nuns who don’t speak a word of English, yet they’re able to recall for detectives every meticulous detail of an overheard conversation a while walking on the San Francisco waterfront.

The kicker, though, is when Isaac Bell realizes that the best way to protect Josephine is to pilot a plane himself as he guards her across the company.  So Bell immediately purchases an aircraft (in addition to being dashingly handsome, incredibly smart, and fearless, he’s immensely wealthy as well) and with no training, he’s able to take-off, fly, and land his new plane with effortless effort.   I could only shake my head when I got to this part.  All I could think of was:  Sure.  Right.  Great.   Also, can novice pilots fly a plane and manage to shoot adversaries from a pistol in midair as well?

We also have a re-occurrence of the regulars that pop up in all the different adventures; including Isaac’s fiancé Marian.   Marian is a filmmaker (another relatively new glamorous occupation of the time) and she manages to pop up a few times to have witty conversations with her beaux as well as film the spectacular event.  Marian is the only “thing” that keeps people like Isaac Bell and Josephine Frost from ever becoming ga-ga with each other.

On the bright side, there were a couple of plot twists that made this adventure slightly more unique than what we’re used to when we read Clive Cussler novels.  Sadly, though, the ending was quite stupid.  Again, one has to roll their eyes with the incredulity of the plot.

So if you’ve only read a few of Cussler’s works, you’ll probably enjoy this book better than I did.  I really can’t rate this book too negatively; as the problem is probably more me than the actual book.  It really does mostly succeed in places, it’s just that the unbelievable situations and actions simply become too much for one after reading several of these stories.