‘King Solomon's Curse’ by Andy McDermott

Published by Headline,
21 September 2017.
ISBN: 978-1-4722-3685-2

The Prologue opens with Eddie Chase going to the Canary Islands to help identify a Phillipe Mukobo from the Congo, who has a reputation as a fanatic and is responsible for numerous killings. Once he has successfully identified the despot a manic car chase ensues and Mukobo is captured.

Two years later the African is being flown to New York for the murder of a group of American aid workers six years previously. The plane mysteriously crashes into the Atlantic and Mukobo is believed to have been killed, but he makes a miraculous escape mid-flight!

We then come another year forward and Eddie's wife Nina an archaeologist, who with her own television documentary series, heads a team opening the First Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.  They find a diorama of a city with Old Hebrew inscriptions describing it as Zhakana, City of the Damned in the jungle of Sheba and built on Solomon's instructions. It also describes a great yet dangerous power contained within known as ‘The Mother of Shamir’.

Nina gets a group together to go to Sheba in the Congo and Eddie joins her. They leave their daughter Macy with Eddie's father. The television crew accompany her to record the hunt for the artefact.

After working their way through many booby traps they find a small ‘Shamir’ which is lethal in spite of its size and contained in a lead lined box. However, Mukobo and Brice an old adversary of Eddie's together with a group of Militia have accompanied them and are determined to have it for themselves. There follows a terrifying battle for the destructive stone resulting in many deaths on both sides and Eddie and Nina lose the Shamir.

On returning to England they are horrified to learn what terrible use the Shamir is going to be put to. They must do everything they can to prevent it, but can they? Brice has lead them to believe that the British Government is behind the destruction plot, but can this really be possible? To cap it all their daughter is kidnapped and her life is threatened. They must find where she is and rescue her, it becomes a mad race against time. Can they make it?

One thing we can rely on with Andy McDermott's books is nonstop action, excitement, tension and mayhem, sorry that's four for a start!

I thoroughly enjoy his stories, real escapist fantasy with a touch of humour. Recommended for those who enjoy a book that has everything and moves along at one hundred miles an hour.

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Reviewer: Tricia Chappell

Andy McDermott was born in Halifax.  He is the bestselling author of the Nina Wilde/Eddie Chase series of adventure thrillers, which have been sold in over 30 countries and 20 languages. His debut novel, The Hunt For Atlantis, was published in the UK in 2008; on its US publication the following year it became his first of several New York Times bestsellers. He is also the author of the explosive spy thriller The Persona Protocol, and the first in a planned series of short stories about celebrity sleuth Leviticus Gold. A former journalist and movie critic, Andy was the editor of respected UK magazines like DVD Review and the iconoclastic film publication Hotdog. He is now a full-time author. He now lives in Bournemouth.

  

Tricia Chappell. I have a great love of books and reading, especially crime and thrillers. I play the occasional game of golf  (when I am not reading). My great love is cruising especially to far flung places, when there are long days at sea for plenty more reading! I am really enjoying reviewing books and have found lots of great new authors.