Adventure Here....

The Black Pearl by Peter Tonkin
Years ago a Japanese firm finds a massive oyster bed in a lake deep in the jungle of Africa that produce priceless black pearls. The lake is at the bottom of a volcano which erupts and buries the Japanese firm. The area is between two warring countries and there is also a renegade guerrilla force with a witch doctor guarding the jungles. A Russian mining group has found that the black pearl site contains a vast reserves  of coltan, a Rare Earth metal used in electronics and computers worth a fortune. They asks Richard Mariner to take a team in and claim the remote lake. Richard must cross through almost impenetrable jungle fight and survive attacks from all sides including a Chinese firm which is trying to lay claim to the same land. Who will win??? This is a nail-biting thriller, a very enjoyable read.  Great characters, excellent plotting, a wonderful thrill ride! Peter Tonkin has written other books with the characters of Richard Mariner some of which are alluded to in this book but reading his other books is not absolutely necessary to enjoy this great adventure.


Sherlock Holmes and the Needle's Eye by Len Bailey
This is a wonderful read. The author replicates Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters and setting perfectly. He develops a new Sherlock adventure where Sherlock has found a Moriarity built device called the Needle's Eye which allows Sherlock and Watson to travel back in time to solve ten mysteries of the Bible that they have been challenged with by an unknown source. They begin their journeys as invisible witnesses at first but eventually they become more than observers. The juxtaposition of Sherlock's almost atheism against Watson's strong belief in the Bible makes for interesting discussions between the two. The bible stories are familiar but flourish under the scrutiny of the pair of detectives.

Easy Go by Michael Crichton
 This was a fun read. (It is a shame we lost such a talented voice as Michael Crichton.) This is a plot for classic B movie Egyptian  the story of a lowly professor who translates hieroglyphics. He is translating an obscure piece of parchment when he finds that it is a puzzle, a code written into the hieroglyphs by the author. He deciphers the code and finds that the scroll identifies a location of an unknown undiscovered tomb near the Valley of the Kings. The professor finds an adventurous newspaper reporter, who recruits a crew of thieves and together they set out to locate the tomb and  smuggle the goods out of Egypt. They begin by lawfully setting up a site near the tomb under the guise of taking museum quality photographs of all the hieroglyphs in all the already excavated tombs of the Valley. This they do by day and at night they search for their tomb. Will they find it?...Can they escape with the goods?
This is a fun book and would make a great movie!