Buried at Sea

Rating:
Summary: An Epic Sea Chase
Review: If this is not the perfect Summer read, I don't know what is. Take a young man at a crossroads in his life, put him on a sailboat with a mysterious, wealthy old salt of dubious ethics. Then add a murderous clan of robber barons with endless resources and a motive to pursue our unlikely heroes who may or may not be in posession of a trillion-dollar industrial secret. Mix in a romance and more wild weather than you've ever seen and you'll be hoping for a rainy day just so you can finish it!

Rating:
Summary: An adventuresome bore?
Review: It's hard to describe a book as both full of adventure and boring at the same time, but that is how I found this book to be. The story is about a man with several aliases, owner of a fifty foot sailboat who hires a personal trainer to come on board and keep him "in shape." Little does Jim Leighton, who has little to speak of except nice abs, know that "Will Sparks", the sailboat owner is on the run. From Russian spies to nuclear anythings to satellites in space, someone wants Will Sparks, and wants him badly. Someone with the money, time, and superior intelligence it is going to take to try to keep up with Jim and Will as they sail the ocean all over the world just trying to escape. It seems no port is safe. If you like sailing, you will give this book a five star rating for not only it's adventure content, but the seemingly endless drone of "how to" sail a boat. A very Tom Clancy like story in that the inner and outer and sideways workings of a sailboat compare to his stories of submarines et al. This is where I found it boring, as I know next to nothing about sailboats and am not interested in learning. However, I did find the adventure content excellent, and each time I was sure I'd fall asleep, author Paul Garrison brought it back again. So try it if you like adventure and can handle mechanics, otherwise, leave it for a rainier day.

Rating:
Summary: PUT IN DAVY JONES LOCKER
Review: Paul Garrison obviously loves and knows the sea. What other book could spend so much time describing how to do everything you need to know on a sailboat. This should be called SAILING FOR DUMMIES, it's so full of self-congratulatory knowledge. Most writers whose knowledge of certain things manage to make this knowledge a key part of the book and interesting. Sorry to say, Garrison comes up short on this one.

That's not the only problem. This plot is so unbelievable, and the pacing is sluggish to say the least. First of all, we have this Jim Leighton character who is very narcissistic about his unbelievably muscular body. How many times does Garrison exploit this by calling him Mr. Muscles etc., etc. He becomes very boorish even as his role as the novel's hero and focal point increases. Add Will Stark, the sometime hero, sometime villain, and you get another portrait of an ego-driven, self-centered fool who has something somebody really wants. Then add the buffoonish villains who haven't got the sense to send out airplanes or helicopters to find out where young Leighton and Stark are, you get a novel so unfocused and leaden, it's hard to get through it. Not to mention Shannon, Leighton's sweetheart who is stupid enough to join him on his mission.

And let's get real. The sailboat sets out of Barbados, supposedly on its way to South America. Then the villains intercept them and now it's off to South Africa. We get to South Africa and then we're expecting them to return to Florida. But no, Stark insists they go on to Rio De Janeiro. Then Stark goes and dies, leaving Jim to fend for himself, who then decides he needs to go to South America, only to have to divert to the Falkland Islands and then into the Arctic area, where he fights not only the villains but icebergs and snowstorms. Then once that battle is finished, it's back to South Africa to retrieve this mysterious computer chip.
I swear, I was sealogged by the time the book ended.
Garrison has delivered before in "Fire and Ice"; but this one is a real clunker and I'd file it in Davy Jones locker without hesitation.