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 Cookβs three
epic
voyages through the Pacific islands. If itβs 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 Cookβs second voyage. Is it possible a third diary
exists? One which might detail Cookβs explosive final
voyageβand 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 globeβpast a dead body or twoβand 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.
No excerpt available.
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