Thriller writer Amy Rogers provides today's review. You can learn more about Amy and her work at the bottom of the post.
Book #2 in Morrison’s Tyler Locke series of thrillers about ancient myths and legends (after The Ark)
SUMMARY:
Someone has kidnapped Tyler Locke's father, but the ransom isn't money (which Tyler, a self-made tech wizard, has plenty of). Instead of writing a check, Tyler is forced to help the kidnapper solve a two-thousand-year-old puzzle left behind by the ancient Greek engineering genius Archimedes. With the help of Stacy Benedict, an expert on archeology and ancient Greece whose sister has also been taken, Tyler has five days to find the most valuable treasure of all time: the "gold touch" of King Midas. REVIEW:
The Vault is a smart, contemporary thriller by author Boyd Morrison, himself an engineer, Jeopardy! champion, and all-around smart guy. Morrison's fascination with puzzles and clever mechanical devices shines through in this story. The Vault has a great premise (linking Archimedes, King Midas, and a ruthless present-day treasure hunter), multiple villains, and plenty of action. Like many popular thrillers today, The Vault uses a myth as the basis for a treasure hunt using ancient artifacts and texts. The story flies through a variety of exotic European settings (all easily accessed using Locke's private jet), where our heroes must defuse bombs, commit a heist, escape the mafia, translate dead languages, and more while racing a deadline and dodging a lot of bullets.
Along the way, Morrison incorporates a fair amount of cool and largely accurate tech detail, which should please fans of science-themed thrillers. I liked the way he handled the issue of the Midas Touch itself, stretching reality a little but keeping it believable (if not quite possible). Some of my favorite bits in this novel: creative use of sign language in the plot, a thrilling scene set in a robotic parking garage, a high speed car chase that's one of the best, radioactive strontium, and clever engineering-based puzzles.
This book should appeal to fans of Steve Berry and Dan Brown.
FCC disclaimer: A free copy of this book was given to me by the publisher for review.
Amy Rogers is a scientist, book fan, author, and critic. At ScienceThrillers.com she reviews thrillers with scientific or medical themes. In her latest novel PETROPLAGUE, oil-eating bacteria contaminate the fuel supply of Los Angeles and paralyze the city. View the trailer and read the praise for PETROPLAGUE at AmyRogers.com.
4 comments:
Good review, which also reminded me how long The Ark has been sitting in my to be read pile. I got get cracking.
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I hope it is okay to suggest books you might want to review. Two series which I haven't tried yet, but which look interesting and like they might be appropriate for the site are: Greig Beck's "Beneath the Dark Ice" and "Dark Rising" and Patrick Lee's "The Breach",Ghost Country" and "Deep Sky".
I've read all of Boyd Morrison's novels and can't wait for his next one, The Catalyst, to come out next week.
Big D mentioned Greig Beck and Patrick Lee. I've read all of their novels as well, and loved them too!
I'm always happy to get suggestions. Thanks!
Cool. I have one more book to suggest. Earlier this year Vintage published "The Big Book of Adventure Stories", a huge collection of old pulp adventure stories by guys like: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jack London, H. Rider Haggard, Alistair MacLean, Lester Dent and Sax Rohmer. The forward is by Douglas Preston.
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