Not only is bush pilot Tom Bodeen’s cargo secret, but he’s also landing it in the remote Alaskan wilderness. Yet landing the plane turns out to be the least of his worries when he, his customer Levi and two employees, are confronted by armed hijackers and left for dead. Bodeen is saved from a shot to the head by his aviator’s helmet. 

When he gains consciousness, he realizes he's alone,  is badly injured, has no means to call for rescue and ​​his only hope of survival is to try to find Levi’s cabin, located somewhere miles from the landing site. This leads to a lengthy, tortuous journey across treacherous frozen terrain to get there against the odds. 

Yet getting there is only half the story. When Levi’s wife Elinor and daughter Marianne discover Bodeen, barely alive, and nurse him back to health, a rivalry develops for his affections between the seventeen-year-old Marianne whose hormones are raging out of control and her mother still in her sexual prime though trapped for years in a loveless marriage. Meanwhile, if Levi’s killers learn he’s still alive, they’ll be coming to finish the job of killing him. 

The stage is set as two jealous women with needs compete for an attractive injured man miles from civilization where societal norms, even law and order, amount to survival of the fittest.  

One woman will lose, leaving the other scorned. Hell, hath no fury… 

Survive – Love and Murder in Alaska is the perfect setting for author Clark Wilkins to present his knowledge of survival in extreme winter environments. Realistic plotting, detailed action and complicated relationships culminate in a surprising end that makes for an interesting and informative novel. 

Surv

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This book took me back to when my children were little. I used to love reading these books when my children would check them out from the library and this one, was no exception. I choose my first path through the book, based on what I’d want to do and then, I went back and reread the book a few times, choosing paths that were totally different. I was Harry Houdini, a magician with big dreams!

All paths in the book begin in America, in the year 1899. Working as a traveling sideshow, you like to call yourself the “The King of the Cuffs,” as you’re able to outwit any handcuff that anyone tries to attach to you. This of course, angers the police but you’re starting to make a name for yourself, as people are beginning to notice you. Now in Chicago, as a crowd gathers around, you’re getting the attention that you don’t want. The police have arrested you, placed you in chains, and put you in a cell. Can their charges be legitimate? You’ve never attempted a cell break before, yet it could be possible. You receive a sign just before the lieutenant rushes into your cell to offer you a deal.

It’s time now for the first decision in this book: does Harry take the deal that was offered to him or does Harry decide to use the omen that he received and not take the lieutenant’s deal? What the reader chooses will direct their path to the next section to read and set their course for this book.

This book is based on a true story and there’s an article about Harry at the back of the book. I enjoyed my adventures as I traveled through the book; some were short-lived and I did have one very long journey. I did learn a few things about this man as I read and having the opportunity to choose the storyline is a very fun way to read a story. 4.5 stars

A ship goes down in unknown waters leaving only two survivors that know where a vast amount of Chinese heritage is located, a ship that a human trafficking Chinese businessman would do anything to find.  Flood Tide is the fourteenth book of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt with the titular character attempting to stop a human trafficking ring to the U.S. and preventing a massive economic and human disaster in Louisiana.

A ship taken by the retreating Nationalist government is loaded the national treasures of China before Mao’s Communists can get them in 1948, but before it reaches it’s destination it sinks in a violent storm with only the ship’s engineer and his girlfriend surviving on a freezing shore.  In 2000 Dirk Pitt is vacationing and recovering from his injuries in Australia at Orion Lake when he realizes the cabin he borrowed has been search by the security of a Chinese businessman’s estate at the other end of the lake.  Intrigued Pitt investigates only to find the mansion is a holding prison for illegal Chinese immigrants while the bottom of the lake is littered with dead bodies.  Pitt saves new victims from drowning including an undercover INS agent and wrecks to the estate’s docking area before escaping down the Orion River to the Pacific from the security force.  The INS raid the estate and the businessman Qin Shang begins damage control, including sending feelers to the White House and the President who he has given money to for his reelection campaign.  Pitt teams up with Al Giordino to investigate a cruise ship in Hong Kong that Shang had bought and was refitting believing it’s to continue his illegal human trafficking ring, but find it empty except for automated guidance equipment that then navigates the ship across the Pacific without a crew.  The pair return to the U.S. and Pitt along with the INS agent survive a car chase against Shang’s henchmen, but NUMA and the INS have a spat leading to them not working together anymore.  Pitt and Giordino head to the Louisiana to investigate Shang’s shipping port that is in the middle of no where from the Mississippi when the duo figure out how his human trafficking network works in the area and again save the INS agent that Pitt keeps running into.  Shang’s automated cruise ship arrives on the Mississippi River, but Pitt figured out Shang’s plan to redirect the flow of the Mississippi bypassing New Orleans and going to his out-of-the way port by blowing a levee and scuttling the cruise ship across the river.  Pitt and Giordino takeover the ship and guide it into the levee’s breech to prevent a massive disaster.  Shang flees to China where the Communist government will protect him while as there is battle in the U.S. between those he bribed against those who want him charged with terrorism.  After learning everything to know about Shang including his search for the ship carrying his nation’s treasures, Pitt and NUMA discover the location of the wreck in Lake Michigan after talking with the survivor of the ship and his wife.  NUMA, the Navy, and a Canadian salvage vessel recover everything before they leak the location into Shang’s channels.  His massive ego leads Shang to arrive in Canada to border his own salvage vessel and goes down first only to find the ship empty with Pitt and Giordino springing a trap that send Shang to the bottom to die like all those at the bottom of Orion Lake.  Admiral Sandecker and the head of the INS threaten the President to keep their own jobs with his own political future in the balance.

Having previously listened to the audiobook edition, I had completely forgotten about the Chinese treasure ship or Shang bribing of U.S. politicians but do remember the human trafficking and diverting the Mississippi plot points.  That was because the human trafficking and Mississippi diversion plots were the good parts of the book while the other two were forgettable.  Pitt comes off as superhuman given what he went through in Shock Wave while the INS agent Julia Marie Lee could have been a good character if not for becoming a multiple time damsel-in-distress character.  Qin Shang could have been an interesting antagonist if not for some the trope material that Cussler saddled him especially at the end of the book.  In fact, Cussler’s politics are heavy handed throughout the book and his “not-Clinton” but totally Clinton President were a little too much for my tastes.

Shock Wave is a okay book at best and felt a like downgrade in quality from Clive Cussler’s previous installments of his bestselling series.  While not as bad as some of the early books in the series, this book was a disappointment given the good elements that were undermined by the bad.