HAVOC (Philip Mercer #7) by Jack Du Brul

Published in 2006 by Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Read by J. Charles.
Duration: 12 hours, 43 minutes.
Unabridged audio edition.

Jack Du Brul's Havoc is a techno-thriller that races from the Hindenburg disaster to Africa to Washington, D.C to Atlantic City to Niagara Falls to Russia and back to Africa with hardly any time to take a breath. 

The book features Philip Mercer, a geologist by training that often troubleshoots for the White House. This is the seventh book featuring Mercer, a fact that was not on the audiobook label. However, Du Brul does a great job of catching the reader up on what has been going on - I assumed it was the first book in the series as I was listening to it. 

The Hindenburg disaster on May 6, 1937.

The action starts with a traveler on the infamous Hindenburg as it flies to its fate with destiny in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937. A crazed man is hiding a secret in a safe in his room and he is afraid that the Nazis know he has it and are plotting to steal it from him. As this man sits and watches his safe he devises a plan to get it safely off of the airship before it lands in New Jersey - he throws it overboard into a farm field with an attached note for Albert Einstein. The note falls off and the safe gets forgotten in the chaos of the Hindenburg disaster.

Fast forward to modern day in the Central African Republic. Mercer accidentally meets Cali Stowe, a fellow American. Mercer tells her he is here to investigate a geological hunch for someone as a favor. She says that she is there to investigate a village that has an extraordinarily elevated cancer rate. They are both telling half-truths. But, most importantly, this village is in the middle of a civil war and a dangerous warlord is on his way, burning and looting as he comes...

As the story progresses, Stowe and Mercer find that they have a mutual interest in this village and in each other. The more they find out about, the more tense the situation becomes. There are a lot of complicated threads in this book but Du Brul does tie them all together at the end

The story is full of action and adventure - some of it fun, some of it believable, some so outrageous that the story borders on silly. Mercer gets to be too much after a while - he is an expert on the Hindenburg, he knows how to fight, he's an expert with pistols, grenades, rifles, knives, swords and even with bows and arrows. He knows about mines, cave-ins, scuba diving, trains, dinosaur bones, forklifts, helicopters, speed boats and bar tending. But, his heart is in the right place and if you just go with the flow and don't think about it it just might not bother you too much. 

The audiobook was read by J. Charles. Charles did a merely okay job with the variety of accents required by this book. He has a hard time with women's voices and Cali Stowe has a lot of lines in this book. His foreign accents all fell into the category of "not an English language accent". Everyone kind of sounded the same. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Havoc (Philip Mercer #7) by Jack Du Brul.

Reviewed on July 22, 2014.

Corsair (Oregon Files) by Clive Cussler and Jack Du Brul

This is my first Clive Cussler book.

Originally published in 2009.

For years I have seen Clive Cussler books sitting there in the book racks - one bestseller after another and I never quite got the itch to buy one. Finally, a family member handed Corsair (Oregon Files) to me and I gave it a tumble.

I've done a bit of peeking at the other reviews and have found that lots of people felt this one was not up to Cussler's usual standards. That could be, I really have no way to judge as this is my first. But, I can say that this book was long on action, very short on believability and full of entertaining, but pointless scenes that didn't advance the plot but did pad the book's length.

Positives:

Commodore Stephen Decatur (1779-1820)

This is not a book that fools around with misbegotten sentiments for the "poor" Somali pirates and Islamic terrorists. Pirates are summarily dealt with and a fictional comment from a real world historical figure (Stephen Decatur) says the following about the Barbary Pirates, which can certainly be applied to terrorists today: "They hate us because we are different from them. But, most important, they hate us because they think they have the right to hate us." (p. 20)

Negatives:

The vehicles are oversized versions of the Batmobile and the Batboat. They have loads and loads and loads of weapons, secret compartments and assorted cables, winches, computers and gas masks stuck in those vehicles. Plus, like the BatVehicles, these vehicles cannot be destroyed and are infinitely adaptable. For me, it got old. The whole train scene was entertaining but is the epitome of this problem.

The captain, Juan Cabrillo owes a debt to Captain Kirk as well. Check out this quote about what Juan would do: " 'That's easy...Take out the bad guys, find the tomb, and somehow manage to bed a local Bedouin girl." (p. 434)

So, now that I've read one, will I be reading any more Clive Cussler books? Maybe, since so many reviewers on Amazon.com noted the things that I thought were annoying. Perhaps an older Dirk Pitt was the place to start.

I rated this book 3 stars out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Corsair (Oregon Files).

Reviewed on June 24, 2010.