Random House, Inc.
Featuring: Penelope Wilkes; Adrian Hart; Michael Bevan
246 pages ISBN: 080417928X EAN: 9780804179287 Kindle: B00IQROTNS e-Book Add to Wish List
Michael Bevan is just barely scraping by with his used
bookstore. He wants to live in the world of rare books
but has yet to find anything that allows him to attain
the status. He is at the point where he is ready to
close his business and sell his stock when he happens
across an old journal. Mike's excitement grows as he
reads the journal and investigates his findings.
He goes to a convention to validate what he believes the
journal to be. While there he meets two other rare book
sellers who not only validate his findings but own one of
the other journals by the same man.
The sailor who wrote the journal traveled on each of
Captain Cook's three voyages. Intimate details are given
despite the fact that the sailor could have been killed
for what he revealed.
When both journals are stolen, the three booksellers set
off on a journey that will hopefully lead them to the
third journal. Mike, Adrian Hart, and Penelope Wilkes
will form an uneasy and distrusting alliance in their
desire to find the journals again.
I picked up the first Thomas Shawver book since the
protagonist owned a used and rare bookstore. My love
for books coincides with Mike's. While I enjoyed it, it
didn't leave me anxiously waiting for more. The second
book started off well but the machinations of the rare
book world and the lengths to which the three owners go
to achieve their goals left me greatful that I don't have
to deal with the underhanded manueverings that Mike
faced.
I really would like to give LEFT TURN AT PARADISE an
outstanding
rating. It started off with such exciting events but the
ending fell flat for me. If you like your detectives
fatally flawed, this might be the series for you.
Michael Bevan is barely scraping by with his used
bookstore
and rare book collection when he discovers a timeworn
journal that may change everything. Dating back to 1768,
the
tattered diary appears to be a chronicle kept during the
first of legendary seafarer Captain James Cook’s three
epic
voyages through the Pacific islands. If it’s as valuable
as
Mike thinks it is, its sale may just bring enough to keep
his faltering used bookstore afloat for another year.
Then he meets a pair of London dealers with startling
news:
Adrian Hart and Penelope Wilkes claim to possess the
journal
of Cook’s second voyage. Is it possible a third diary
exists? One which might detail Cook’s explosive final
voyage—and his death at the hands of native Hawaiians?
Together, all three would be the holy grail of Pacific
exploration. But before Mike can act, the two journals are
stolen.
Chasing them down will sweep Michael, Adrian, and Penelope
across the globe—past a dead body or two—and into a very
sinister slice of paradise. High in the Southern Alps of
New
Zealand, in a remote and secretive Maori compound, a
secret
rests in the hands in of a man daring enough to rewrite
history . . . and desperate enough to kill.