Sloppy

I enjoyed The Chase because it was a fun story with cool characters. The Van Dorn Detective Agency operating in 1906 makes for a very interesting setting, and I would like to see more adventures starring their star detective, Isaac Bell. In The Chase, Bell is sent to stop the Butcher Bandit, an outlaw who robs banks and murders every single witness in his spare time. Nobody knows who he is or what he looks like, so Bell has his work cut out for him. The story keeps building momentum and, except for the whole earthquake deal, it never loses steam. It is a fun rollercoaster of a read that leaves you satisfied and wanting for more. That's good.

What's not good is Clive Cussler's writing skills. I had never read anything by him before, so I don't know if his previous books are as sloppily written as this one, but man could this guy use an editor. You could say I'm picky, and maybe you're right, but Stephen King would positively die if he saw all the unnecessary adverbs Mr. Cussler loves to use and overuse. In addition to that, his not exactly elegant prose and some jarring dialogue detract from what could have been a really excellent book, but that's not the worst offense. The worst part is Cussler's uncanny ability to forget his characters' names and call them something else. Two examples:

One of the main characters is a detective called Curtis. Well, halfway through the book, Curtis becomes Carter in a particular scene, and I almost lost my sanity trying to figure out who this Carter was and where Curtis had gone. A few pages later, Curtis became Curtis again, so I thought "Oh, well." But then, later in the book, Curtis becomes Carter for the second time, only to revert to his previous name a couple of paragraphs later. How can you mess up like that? Did he not re-read his manuscript? And what about the editor? It is not as if there is another character named Carter and the author mixes up both names. There is no character named Carter at all, and I therefore find this mistake very aggravating.

The second example comes toward the end of the book. A young boy named Stuart brings a message for Horace Bronson, and Isaac Bell rewards him with twenty dollars, fifteen more than the boy was expecting. But when Bell gives him the money, it's Warren's eyes who are big with disbelief, not Stuart's. Who the hell is Warren? As it turns out, he is but another mistake of Mr. Cussler, because he is unquestionably referring to Stuart. How do you go from Stuart to Warren? And, even worse, how do you make that mistake in the space of five lines? It is not as if Stuart showed up early in the book, and then, when he reappeared two hundred pages later the author had forgotten his name. No. Stuart shows up in one paragraph, and he turns into Warren on the next!

And yet, despite these unfortunate lapses, The Chase was a lot of fun, so at least I got that much out the book. However, I keep wondering if this is something he does in all his books. If you know anything about this, please let me know!