DaveWells.us

In The Chase, Clive Cus­sler for the first time strays from his usual nau­ti­cal focus (although the book’s open­ing scene does take place on a sal­vage boat) and his inter­wo­ven casts of exist­ing char­ac­ters. His new pro­tag­o­nist, Isaac Bell, does take seom cues from the Dirk Pitt/Kurt Austin mold, but he also seems to take some inspi­ra­tion from James West (of The Wild Wild West as well. Bell is a young man from a wealthy fam­ily who, just after the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, is the best detec­tive at the pri­vate Van Dorn agency (mod­elled after the Pinker­ton National Detec­tive Agency.

Bell is called to Den­ver to help in the inves­ti­ga­tion of a par­tic­u­larly bru­tal bank rob­ber known only as the Butcher Ban­dit. The Ban­dit hits banks when they have large amounts of cash on hand, kills all wit­nesses, and always man­ages to dis­ap­pear com­pletely. Bell and his fel­low Van Dorn agents hunt the Butcher Ban­dit and his beau­ti­ful accom­plice through­out the west­ern U.S., involv­ing a train vs. car race through Cal­i­for­nia and cul­mi­nat­ing in a steam loco­mo­tive chase over the Sier­ras, through Nevada and Idaho, and into Montana.

I enjoyed this book more than Cussler’s last few nov­els. It’s fresh sub­ject mat­ter for him, and The Chase has no co-author. I hope that he’ll Write more Isaac Bell nov­els and that he’ll do them him­self, rather than farm­ing them out to his grow­ing sta­ble of collaborators.