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Obras de Vic. Robbie

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This book is about so much more than just the spoils of war. The soldiers fighting and dying on the front lines are merely one facet of the overall battle plan. Spies, agents, double agents, entrepreneurs, and politicians all play their own parts in turning the tides.

This story played out like a movie in my head. The mood and setting were in place. The story begins with fear. A Nazi officer fears discovery. Parisians fear the loss of their lives as well as their beloved city. Bombs heard in the distance could be felt by the anxious attempting to flee before its too late.

Fade to Ben Peters, an American living and working in Paris. Sent to learn European banking practices, Ben finds himself tasked with the impossible; escape to Portugal with precious cargo. His boss at the bank gives him little choice. France and England need him to succeed.

Read the rest of this review at www.feedmybibliodiction.wordpress.com
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Bibliodiction | outras 2 resenhas | Apr 28, 2018 |
The Shocking Secret of World War 11

Said in the third person narrative, “In a Pursuit of Platinum” revolves around three characters: Ben Peters, Alena and Ludwig Weber. Whether this adventure is true or not, the quest to extricate from the grips of the German Alena and her son and drive them in a Bentley loaded with the most precious of metal Platinum from occupied Paris through the Pyrenees, Spain and Portugal to hopefully reach the shore of England is at the most shocking, if not a nail-biting political saga that for most part kept me on the edge of my seat.

Alena and her son were more important than the platinum both for the Nazis and for England but what made her such a valuable target: thus the title of this book “shocking secret”. All through the story I was confuse enough to wonder if I was reading a non-fiction or a fiction and if that secret was real or not. Many parts of their journey didn’t seem realistic: how could a Bentley loaded down could cover the rough terrain through the mountains without losing some of the platinum or falling in hidden crevices. How did the group managed to escape the hands a War Lord, crossing police blockades and a multitude of traps to only come out with some dents on the Bentley and some scratches on their bodies. Parts were so unrealistic that I questioned if this really could have happened. I deducted parts could have been product of the author imagination in order to enhance his narrative and make his book entertaining and others could have been the real facts….which is which I could not detect, the author never mentioned a word. A fact: “The Freedom Trail (Chemin de la Liberté) did exist and was a WW11 escape route to Spain.

Having said this, the story is nevertheless quite a page-turner I enjoyed reading from start to finish. The style is colourful and it moves at a fast-paced. The writing and evocation of the time in Paris is quite convincing. The characterization is good and is expertly played out, first class act by all of them. Good overall even with its abrupt and disappointing ending.
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Tigerpaw70 | outras 2 resenhas | Feb 10, 2018 |
Let's face it, if you're going to subtitle your novel 'the shocking secret of World War II', it'd better be shocking. And a secret. And it does mean you have to put together a novel to deliver the reader the knockout blow of said secret. Here, I'm afraid, while the secret certainly should have been shocking (and would be, were it true), when it finally came to it, I'd already pretty much guessed what the secret was and wasn't all that shocked. And felt a little let down that I wasn't.

The story is that Ben Peters, an American working in Paris in 1940, is to drive a car, a Bentley, loaded with a fortune in platinum. Pretty much the whole of France's monetary resources, to Portugal. There, he is to rendezvous with the British, who will sail/fly him to safety. However, in return for their help, the British have decided he should also take a passenger or two. A Frenchwoman and her young son. Simples. But as the journey progresses, the pursuers and body counts pile up, it becomes more and more clear that the platinum isn't the most valuable thing Peters has in his Bentley.

The secret of why the Frenchwoman and her son are so valuable, is the 'shocking secret' of the title. I'm actually not sure that Mr Robbie, wouldn't in fact like us to be slightly confused by the title and subtitle of the book. Confused enough to wonder if this isn't a non-fiction book and that what the secret is, is/was actually real. It's just that by the time the secret is revealed (if you hadn't sussed it before), the qualms you have over the not quite sharp enough dialogue, quick but limp romance and how on earth they could have driven a Bentley over so many rough, war-strewn French roads and over so much rough Spanish terrain, without losing so much as an ounce of the platinum hidden in various crevices of a pre-war Bentley - kind of obscure and therefore dilute the 'revelation.' Well, they did for me anyway.

It was a fine effort, I enjoyed reading it and it has many good ideas and a plot that actually hangs together more than most. A little let down by the execution though, as I mentioned. But don't let that put you off, as others on Goodreads have obviously found this to be a very good book, giving it an average score of over 4 stars, if I remember rightly. So it's probably just me. To be honest, I found the writing and evocation of war-time Paris, to be more convincing than the chase which takes up much of the book once they're out of the city. I felt the writing from then on could and should have been a bit sharper, a bit more polished. If you're going to get someone on the front cover saying ‘An action adventure story in the tradition of Ken Follett and Robert Harris with the cutting edge of a Tom Clancy or W.E.B Griffin wartime thriller’, you have to make sure you deliver. And this, in the end, didn't quite. This cutting edge felt a little blunt.
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Marcado
Speesh | outras 2 resenhas | Mar 29, 2014 |

Estatísticas

Obras
8
Membros
23
Popularidade
#537,598
Avaliação
3.0
Resenhas
3
ISBNs
6