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Book Review of The Race (Isaac Bell, Bk 4)

The Race (Isaac Bell, Bk 4)
reviewed on + 211 more book reviews


Get ready for a fast book

What the author(s) do with this series: Clive Cussler and Justin Scott know how to write a book. This is part of the series called the Isaac Bell Adventures. This paragraph applies to all books in this series. Isaac is an investigator for a private firm who's motto is that the always get their man The books are set in the early 1900's and are based on the author's fascination with the leading technologies of the time â things like fast (by their standards) trains, automobiles and ships. New technologies are introduced like aeroplanes and talking pictures. Depending on the book, many of the social issues of the day are woven into the story such as strikes and strike breakers, gangs running businesses, stock speculators and manipulators as well as later in the series the storm clouds of what will become World War I. The author is skilled at bringing in the details of how society works in that era, such as how beef makes it to NYC, or how different strata of society operate in SFO

Do you need to read this series in order: Probably not, but I think you will miss out on the character development of the protagonist and his lady friend.

Triggers: there is an ample supply of violence, people die, from violence (fires, gun shots, bombs, crashes, knives, beatings, accidents). Some of the violence is directed at kids. In this story there is domestic violence â spousal abuse.

One would think that all that detail would make it a slow read, but that is not the case. The pages fly by, our erstwhile detective, Isaac Bell, is âon the jumpâ all the time. It's a super-fast story line, there is one crisis after another, one more bad guy to conquer and one more good guy to save. This isn't a bad thing at all, but sometimes as the reader you have to take a breath.

The race is about an airplane race across the country. In the background, the author describes all these towns and places and it's nice to see the contrast with the developed cities with the rural areas. The story is chock full of bad guys wanting to sabotage the flying machines, a love story of sorts and spurned lovers.