This book was recommended to me by The Geeky Jock, who has since dropped off my feed.
The author is a wilderness writer, and like many wilderness writers, he can write lyrically about the Canadian forests, giving you a sense of eerie beauty, and then he can turn around and be funny with the hardships that he and his hiking partner have to go through. In this book, he’s on the hunt for “the Traverspine demon,” a mysterious creature that, according to historical records, terrorized a remote outpost in Labrador. It sounds like a Sasquatch (which Shoalts, oversimplifying merrily, says is only attested in the Pacific region), but it leaves cloven footprints.
Shoalts and his friend push on through conditions that would have made this Bigfoot buff turn back, such as days of impassable brush. They don’t find the creature, but they do find a theory. Shoalts, a materialist, decides it was probably a combination of sightings of a wolverine, and moose tracks (both animals were rare in the region at the time). His theory is pretty convincing. He undermines his case a bit by dismissing the Greek centaurs as people’s first sighting of a man on a horse, while ignoring all the other, harder-to-dismiss chimeras that populate Greek legend.
Jack Reacher, drifting through town as is his wont, stops to help out a random guy who’s being bullied, and once again ends up stopping an international plot basically single handedly. He then has a gratuitous affair (not graphically described) with a female character he will never meet again, before leaving town.
Also, Nazis. (Not very creative, guys. Do better.)
One thing I like about the Reacher books is that I’m never worried about him. No matter how outnumbered or apparently outgunned he is, I know Reacher is smarter, quicker, and has more martial arts and military skills than his opponents. But, at the same time, he consistently gets into situations where any sane person would be worried, and I know I should be scared for him. In that way, these books strike a good balance. I’m neither terrified nor bored.
Heartbreaking novel about an American ex-cop who has recently moved to rural Ireland. Super well-written. Very evocative of the landscape, the weather, and the people, including the way they use the English language. For example, they say things like, “He’s after leaving for work” instead of “He just left for work.”
Felix Francis has carried on the beloved institution of “racing thrillers” written by his jockey father, Dick Francis. All novels by Francis (pater and fils) take place in “the racing world.” Sometimes the main character is a jockey, sometimes a trainer or an owner, and sometimes the connection to racing is looser. All are written in the first person.
In this novel, the main character, Chester, very profitably runs a “syndicate.” He buys racehorses and sells shares of them to wealthy people who want to participate in the lifestyle. So each horse has multiple owners, but Chester is the main owner, and the one who liases with the trainers and jockeys to plan out the horses’ careers. Chester is less of a tough-guy character than the typical Francis protagonist. He’s also older and more established than Franics main characters usually are. His children are grown (just), and his wife is aging and losing interest in their marriage.
Syndicate had less action than previous Francis books I’ve read, and considerably less violence (though Francis books do vary a lot in this regard). It is not as tense as the cover makes it appear. I also wasn’t too impressed with some of Chester’s choices. All in all, this wasn’t the strongest Francis novel I’ve read, though it was on-brand. Three stars.
An indispensable reference book. Neither easy nor fun to read. I’ll be reviewing this in greater detail later.
Out of Babel Books 