Cussler again writes with a coauthor, this time it is Justin Scott. This book is a period piece that takes place almost exclusively in 1907. The plot takes place around building a railroad line through a particularly difficult place in the Rockies. The railroad tycoon is Osgood Hennessy. He owns the Southern Pacific Railroad, but he also wants to corner the market on all railroads in the U.S. However, he has a foil, the Wrecker, whose true identity is not revealed until near the end of the story. As clever as Hennessy is at pushing forward his plans, the Wrecker is equally clever at thwarting those moves and pushing Hennessy towards bankruptcy. There is a race against time to complete the main bridge and tunnels through the Cascade Cutoff before winter starts. Hennessy knows that if he does not get done in time, that he will never get the funding that he needs to complete the project and become the richest man in America. In what must be akin to the Pinkertons, Hennessy hires the Van Dorn Detective Agency to guard his rail and get the Wrecker, and their best detective is Isaac Bell. Bell is the main character who slowly and gradually gets closer to figuring out the identity of the Wrecker. Of course, the story includes beautiful women, politicians, and relationship intrigues. Overall, this book falls into my “airplane book” category. There were times when I thought the authors were getting lost in the details rather than pushing the plot. I learned more about railroads than I had known before. For me, it was fun to think about my grandfather who in the 1920s to 1940s, was a conductor on the Nickle Plate Railroad that ran from Dayton, Ohio, to Chicago, with my home, Fort Wayne, being the midway point of the line. His stories about encountering the Capone boys were always interesting (but I digress, again).
West Coast Don
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