It's easy to see why Travis McGee's legend endures. He's a white knight in tarnished armor, a decent man who lives by his own moral code and personal philosophy on the outside of society, on a houseboat called The Busted Flush.
No stereotypical P.I., he's a self described "salvage expert" who will find what was taken from the innocent...for half of what he retrieves.
Although a character of his time and place, Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the 1960s, he is more timeless than dated, in my opinion.

Highly recommended.

This was an absolutely fascinating and extremely well researched story of The sinking of the S.S. Central America, which had been carrying five hundred passengers, many of them returning from the Gold Rush in California in 1857. The ship ran into trouble when a hurricane hit and the S.S Central America sank 200 miles of the Carolina coast.

The Ship was sailing from Panama to New York, It had been carrying 500 passengers and 20 tons of gold from the goldfields of California worth (at the time) 2 million dollars. (Over 50 million Dollars currents valuation). After 150 years of lying at the bottom of the sea, an engineer from Ohio by the name of tommy Thompson set out Along with the Columbus-America Discovery Group to find the Central America in eight thousand feet of water and try and make claim on the millions of Gold sitting at the bottom of the sea.

This book was written in 1998 and I obtained a used hard copy on Amazon as I had been fascinated when first leaning of this story. This is an extremely well written and researched Account firstly of the tragic sinking of the S.S Central America and her passengers and the first 150 pages of the book sets the scene and you become acquainted with Captain, crew and passengers of this ship. The story of the sinking is very well documented and you feel as if you are right there on the ship and feel the fear and the cold of the passengers. This was a heartbreaking story of the sinking and the Captain of the ship was hailed a hero by the surviving passengers which is well documented in this story.

When the story moves to the 1980s and Tommy Thompson’s quest to find the site of the S.S Central America the book becomes a lot more technical but is still fascinating to learn how deep-sea-robots were developed to perform heavy and complex work.

The third part of the story once again picks up pace and I read with baited breath to the end of this engrossing and captivating story. The author Gary Kindler has written a remarkable historical account of the sinking of S.S. Central as well as an entertaining adventure story.

When I finished this account I realized there had to be more to this story from when the book ended and after a little research online I was shocked and amazed at the happenings since. I wonder was Gary Kindler as amazed as me at what has taken place since he wrote this book and perhaps there is another book yet to be written

A fascinating tale of history, science and adventure, heavy on detail and quite complex but engrossing and unputdownable and a book I will certainly remember many years from now.

 

Another one I was lucky enough to snag from Hatchette Children’s on Netgalley (and another one I somehow managed to lose the review file and bought a finished paperback for).

 

I think this is a case of I liked the concept of this book, I loved the supporting characters, but I completely hated the main characters for most of the book. The book is an Australian based YA, telling the story of two main characters, Rachel and Henry.

 

Henry’s family own a popular second hand book stop, and have this wonderful thing called a Letter Library, a section of the bookshop stuffed with books that aren’t for sale, but where customers can put letters in the books where anyone can pick them and read them, and maybe write back. This was such a wonderful concept, there’s something about writing a letter where you can express yourself in words that you would never be able to say to someone’s face. Rachel and Henry were best friends, but Rachel has been crushing on Henry for years and never told him. When her family has to move, Rachel leaves a letter for Henry in his favourite book in the Letter Library telling him how she feels.

 

By this time Henry has a girlfriend, the beautiful Amy, who Rachel doesn’t really like much or get along with that brilliantly. Henry never finds the letter. Fast forward to school being over, Rachel is suffering from a family tragedy and struggling to cope, she hasn’t told any of her friends about what happened and is keeping everything bottled up inside. I found Rachel aloof, cold and rude. Yes, I get she’s going through something terrible and I could certainly empathise with her, but I really did not like her as a character at all. Her attitude grated on my nerves.

 

Rachel comes back to her former home town to move in with an aunt. She finds a job at Henry’s family’s bookshop. She hasn’t spoken to Henry since she left and he never found her letter. Henry meanwhile, is moping over a broken heart. His beloved girlfriend Amy has broken up with him, just weeks before they were scheduled to go on a round the world trip together. Henry can’t get over it, he can’t figure our or understand why Amy had ended the relationship. 

 

Out of the two characters, Henry was marginally more likeable than Rachel. He was friendly and approachable, though he spent most of the novel pining over Amy and basically acting like a love sick moron. It got very annoying very quickly.

 

One thing I really loved about the novel was the supporting characters. Henry had a wonderful family, his mom and dad were active characters, as was his sister George. Rachel’s aunt was also wonderful. The two of them had the same friends, and some additional characters came in, and I loved them all. I just didn’t like Rachel and Henry (or Amy and her douchebag new boyfriend). 

 

The more time they spend together the more Henry realises he might have feelings for Rachel, and Rachel finally finds herself dealing with some of the stuff she’s been going through and talking about it, and therefore finally able to get to a place where she can be comfortable with herself and move on. 

 

It was well written, and very easy to picture what was going on. As I said, I just did not like the two main characters at all. There were some lovely emotional parts towards the end, but it wasn’t really enough to give this book a wow factor for me. It was just okay. 

In the aftermath of their experience on Seabase Four, the Doctor and his companions Tegan and Turlough arrive at a 1970s seaside town ready for a holiday. Instead they quickly find themselves entangled in an investigation into a gristly series of murders and violent episodes involving the local inhabitants. With UNIT on the scene, the Doctor joins their effort to unravel what is going on, quickly uncovering a fearsome new alien threat. But will the Doctor be able to figure out what is going on before the phenomenon overcomes the inhabitants of the town — and then, the world itself?

By inserting the fifth Doctor into an adventure set during the third Doctor's era, Mark Morris's novel offers something a little different from most of its counterparts in the Past Doctor Adventures series. In some respects it's a study in contrasts, with a different Doctor and set of companions mixing with the characters familiar from a previous era. It's a mix that Morris pulls off well, in part because of the situation facing them. As others have noted the franchise is never stronger than when it is showing its roots. Here the gruesomeness of the violence and the body horror theme owes more than a little to the works of H. P. Lovecraft, with the countervailing force of the Doctor added to ensure a happy ending. While everything is a little too tidily wrapped up in its final pages considering what preceded them, this is nonetheless a solid entry in the Past Doctor Adventures series, one that offers the sort of premise that justifies why such novels are written.

 

 

This novel takes place immediately after the events of Deep Down Dead and concerns a bounty hunter, Lori Anderson, out on a job to bring justice to her mentor and ex-lover, JT. She has to find an escaped convict on orders from an FBI agent but, unsurprisingly, not all is at it seems and the novel includes murder, stolen goods and the Mob.

 

With a little too much introspection for my liking, this thriller is truly engaging and exciting with good character development. More of an old-fashioned detective thriller than the last book, it is enjoyable and well worth reading – it reads as if the author had a film scenario in place: it's easy to imagine as a film. A further volume will follow. Recommended.