Reviewed
by: Sam Waite
Genre:
Historical Fiction/Mystery/Romance
Approximate
word count: 170-175,000
words
Availability
Click
on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes &
Noble, or Smashwords store
Author:
“V.
E. Smith is a retired marine scientist living in Boulder, Colorado.
He received a Ph.D. at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Following
that, he served as a captain in the U.S. Army in Korea. For most of
his professional career he worked on the Great Lakes as an
environmental researcher and consultant. The Smiths have two children
with their own families in Boulder and Madrid, Spain.”
Description:
A
Vietnam veteran recovering from war wounds takes leave to look for
his grandmother’s sister in Ireland. The sister was left behind as
an infant when the Spanish flu pandemic tore the family apart. A
chance encounter with a robber trying to steal an artifact from the
sunken Girona, a galleass of the Spanish armada fleeing British
ships, leads to romance and intrigue.
Appraisal:
Findings
is a picturesque cozy set in Dingle on the west coast of Ireland, and
is roughly equal parts travel log, romance and mystery. The story is
delightfully satisfying in the first two. Historical and technical
elements, including metallurgy and gemology, are meticulously
researched and for the most part unobtrusively woven into the story.
Descriptions
of the region’s landscapes evoke the hardscrabble lives of early
settlers and the lingering effects on the present-day character of
its population. A trip to Great Blasket isle, a resourceless strip of
land in a storm-plagued sea, tells that story in the extreme. Once
populated by fishers, rabbit hunters and writers, the island was
abandoned in 1953 as a settlement. Ruins of stone houses remain a
draw for tourists today.
The
humorously named hero, “Brit” who is a Yank with Irish roots,
romances a local nurse. She not only initially dislikes him, but is
involved with an up-and-coming Irish banker she has known for years.
The romance element of the story is neatly set up with engaging
characters, whose speech is rendered with just enough local nuance to
sound a brogue without being overbearing.
“Your
nicks are looking better,” he said, “but not your eye. How are
Mrs. Clarke and her niece doing?”
Those
bits alone might make the novel well worth reading, but there are
structural problems with the mystery as well as the broader story. It
is too long with excessive back story. There is an infatuation with a
nurse who befriended Brit after his war wounds. It mirrors his
current love, but it doesn’t presage anything or provide any
insight into his character. It’s dropped into the story with no
apparent purpose. He has a relative who was a gunrunner, which
mirrors the modern day trade, but relevance to the story is specious.
There
is a weapons trade in the novel tied to Irish resistance against
British occupation of Northern Ireland, but it poorly relates to
either the main or subplots. A contrived suspicion that Brit is
somehow an agent to interfere with arms shipments is never resolved
and has nothing to do with the theft of artifacts from the Girona,
which is central to the story. The purpose may be to add an element
of suspense, but the dangers don’t ring true.
A
character introduced toward the end should lead to a tense, violent
encounter, but doesn’t. The character adds little tension and is
another waste of words.
There
are a number of holes in the mystery, one of which is acknowledged by
the author, who attempts ineffectually to explain it away: The
artifact could have been purchased, but instead was stolen, because
buying it might implicate its creator. A cash purchase by a third
party would implicate no one. The theft in the novel, in fact,
implicates the creator.
So who
wanted the artifact? The penultimate chapter explains in a deus ex
machina intervention that scarcely relates to any preceding events.
As for
the romantic story, the last line is sweet with irony.
FYI:
The
reviewer is a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam and appreciates the
author’s depiction of that conflagration.
Format/Typo
Issues:
A few,
but scarce
Rating:
**** Four Stars
No comments:
Post a Comment