Pirate treasure. Billions of dollars worth of buried treasure. A mysterious island partially protected by a wicked riptide that finds ways to kill would-be treasure-hunters. An extremely well-financed scheme to recover that treasure using modern methods.
Mix those ingredients into a small fictitious Maine town and the natural suspicions of townsfolk, and you have the recipe for “Riptide,” a fast-paced novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.
Centuries of treasure hunters have failed to recover the treasures of the Water Pit on Ragged Island where the 17th century pirate Red Ned Ockham buried $2 billion in gold and jewels.
Red Ned had used the talents of Sir William Macallan, a noted English architect, to design the hiding place and include traps for would-be treasure seekers. But as readers progress through “Riptide” they will learn that Macallan also built a secret trap for Red Ned.
As a teen-ager, Malin Hatch and his brother, Johnny, decided to explore the Water Pit of their family-owned island with fatal results for Johnny. The Hatch family was devastated.
More than 25 years later Dr. Malin Hatch is approached by a well-financed group, headed by Capt. Gerald Neidelman, who requests permission to use modern technology to extract the alleged $3-billion in treasures. Malin would get half the profit.
Neidelman’s group has Macallan’s journal that explains how to avoid the traps protecting the treasure. There is a one problem – the journal is written in a code that Neidelman’s group has not broken. Expectations are that the company cryptographers will solve the puzzle in a matter of hours if Malin agrees to allow the search.
Malin will be the medical doctor for the exploration. But he is reluctant to return to his boyhood home after 25 years and face his own past in a small town. Upon Malin’s agreeing to Neidelman’s proposal, the story moves rapidly into technological means for fighting riptides, hidden traps, weird diseases and other mysterious problems with electronic equipment.
The authors paint a fascinating picture of what might happen as the search continues.
Greed creeps into the equation. Fatal accidents, protests led by the small town’s minister and husband of Malin’s boyhood flame, murders and attempted murders and a gigantic nor’easter begins movement into the area at a critical time.
Readers of pirate treasure hunts will find “Riptide” loaded with numerous plots and counterplots. It is a great antidote to wintry weather and Washington redundant news.
* RIPTIDE
By Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Warner. 417 pages. $25.
