Daniel Lenihan

I picked up this book because I’d seen it mentioned as a “swashbuckling sea adventure” with plenty of action and piracy.
However, reading it, I was reminded that when I was a kid I went through a big phase of reading lots of historical nautical books, both fiction and non-fiction. (There were lots of sailors and sea voyages in my family history, which is where the interest stemmed from… check out THIS BOOK, it features my distant relative getting cannibalized…) So, although I show more don’t know HOW to sail or anything like that, I feel that I’ve got a pretty good concept of what life was like on a 19th-century sailing ship. And, in this book, I just wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t notice many inaccuracies (other than that I found it hard to believe that on a ship of 26 hands, there would be sailors that ‘didn’t know each other’ after any amount of voyaging…) but I just wanted more details of shipboard life… but, this is a book that doesn’t get bogged down in details or verisimilitude… it actually, I think, would make a very good movie – and I’m sure that must have been in Gene Hackman’s mind when he was working on it. It’s got just about the level of depth and characterization of your average big-budget movie, with plenty of action scenes, local color and exotic locations (all politically-corrected, to a certain degree.)
The story has to do with a young man who takes to the sea after his parents are murdered by a Cuban Count who seizes the family property. He makes friends with another young man, a victim of shipwreck, and together they have seagoing adventures, as he waits for his chance to take revenge… The checklist of Things That Happen At Sea occurs, fairly predictably – the standout scenes are diving scenes, which (considering that Lenihan is a deep-sea diving expert) seem technically very believable, if contextually very unlikely. show less

A very good memoir of the origins of, and higher profile work for, the National Parks Service Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (NPS SCRU). Lenihan has a clear passion for diving, and is a strong advocate for preserving the nation's underwater cultural artifacts. It was a nice contrast to Shadow Divers (another fabulous diving book), in which many of the wreck divers took 'souvenirs' from the wreck sites, often parts of the superstructure, ensuring that later divers would miss out on the show more experience, and robbing archeologists and historians valuable data about our maritime past. The SCRU philosophy of carefully removing a minimum of material from a site, and focusing on preservation, made me glad to see my tax dollars going to something worthwhile for a change. show less

In Justice for None, Calvin Boyd is a World War 1 combat veteran with a decorated past who settles into Illinois just prior to the Great Depression. Calvin is accused of killing his estranged wife, and immediately goes on the run, seeing how the deck is stacked against him in the legal system. Calvin has people on his side who are trying to help him but he always does his best to thrust these people away from him, often becoming his own worst enemy in the process.
The plot is pretty basic and show more straight forward. There is nothing exceptional about it. I think the best aspect of the novel in terms of the writing was the strong depiction of the setting. The authors do a nice job of setting the mood for both the area of the country and the time-period. The setting also creates the appropriate mood for the story. Calvin Boyd is a fairly likeable character, even though his actions are a bit destructive. Justice For None is a solid but unspectacular read, one that will entertain but not one that is particularly profound.
Carl Alves - author of Blood Street show less

Wake of the Perdido Star is designed to be a fast-paced adventure story. Unfortunately, however, much of the plot developments appear to exist solely for the purpose of allowing action elements such as fights or shipwrecks to be included in the story, giving it a contrived feel. In addition, the authors, both diving enthusiasts, go overboard [pun intended] with details of historical techniques for diving, arranging the plot to allow for the incorporation of these descriptions. The book show more features all the requisite elements of the genre, including pirates, deserted islands, quirky and salty seafaring characters, perils at sea, and various swashbuckling. Overall, this is not an especially deep or life-changing novel, but an interesting read nevertheless. show less