This action novel moves between Afghanistan, where a US soldier is court-martialled for ordering a medevac for a child bitten by a deadly snake, and Alaska, where a crab fishing boat hauls up a coffin-sized carved box. Neither case goes well. Slater is dismissed from the army while Harley's ship strikes a rock and sinks. But Slater is needed back home - he's a doctor and can work as an epidemiologist - and Harley's managed to salvage a Russian cross with emeralds from the coffin.
THE ROMANOV CROSS was buried in a graveyard on an abandoned island, but climate change is melting permafrost and land is slipping into the sea. The bodies buried there died in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 and as 50 million people died worldwide, concern arises that the flu strain could persist in the frozen bodies and cause disaster if disturbed. St. Peter's Island now lures Harley to sail back out there with friends and search for more coffins despite a pack of hungry black wolves, while Dr. Slater is assembling a team, including a Russian, to treat the entire island as a biohazard.
Robert Masello has given us a convincing situation as well as characters so real we can almost feel them breathing. Interspersed we see the lives of some wealthy Russians in 1916, where Rasputin talks to Anastasia at a ball, handing the Romanov princess the cross. Slater receives Inuit hospitality and lessons in tactful handling of tribal burial grounds from Nika, an anthropologist in Port Orlov, who happens to be the mayor and tribal elder. She can delay issuing permits to trespass on tribal grounds - or he can let her tag along. All sides of the situation are skilfully represented. While I didn't much enjoy the scenes about digging up corpses, anyone with an eye toward med school will be fascinated by the extreme precautions taken by the team, from antiviral medication to a hazmat disposable autopsy chamber. Wolves were never recorded as killing humans but Masello shows his pack as without fear and very hungry - perhaps desperate. As the local men make it back to shore the worry is that they could spread the virus around and decimate the population. While not for the tender, THE ROMANOV CROSS is a fast-moving detailed thriller that will keep you reading.
Nearly one hundred years ago, a desperate young woman crawled ashore on a desolate arctic island, carrying a terrible secret and a mysterious, emerald-encrusted cross. A century later, acts of man, nature, and history converge on that same forbidding shore with a power sufficient to shatter civilization as we know it. Army epidemiologist Frank Slater is facing a court- martial, but after his punishment is mysteriously lifted, Slater is offered a job no one else wants—to travel to a small island off the coast of Alaska and investigate a potentially lethal phenomenon: The permafrost has begun to melt, exposing bodies from a colony that was wiped out by the dreaded Spanish flu of 1918. Frank must determine if the thawed remains still carry the deadly virus in their frozen flesh and, if so, ensure that it doesn’t come back to life. Frank and his handpicked team arrive by helicopter, loaded down with high-tech tools, prepared to exhume history. The colony, it transpires, was once settled by a sect devoted to the mad Russian monk Rasputin, but there is even more hiding in the past than Frank’s team is aware of. Any hope of success hinges on their willingness to accept the fact that even their cutting-edge science has its limits—and that the ancient wisdom of the Inuit people who once inhabited this eerie land is as essential as any serum. By the time Frank discovers that his mission has been compromised—crashed by a gang of reckless treasure hunters—he will be in a brutal race against time. With a young, strong-willed Inuit woman by his side, Frank must put a deadly genie back in the bottle before all of humanity pays the price. The Romanov Cross is at once an alternate take on one of history’s most profound mysteries, a love story as unlikely as it is inevitable, and a thriller of heart- stopping, supernatural suspense. With his signature blend of fascinating history and fantastic imagination, critically acclaimed author Robert Masello has once again crafted a terrifying story of past events coming back to haunt the present day . . . and of dark deeds aching to be unearthed.
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