Some years ago, Charles Ardai, founder of Hard Case Crime, conceived of an adventure series featuring (and ostensibly written by) Gabriel Hunt, a swashbuckling adventurer, but actually authored by others. There have apparently been five prior novels, and this one is written by Mr. Ardai himself.

The book reminds me of the serials that used to be shown on Saturdays, along with double features, in which a cliffhanger left us kids panting to find out what happen in the next [what we called] chapter. Or like the silent film called “The Perils of Pauline.” Only in this novel, the cliffhangers don’t come with every chapter, but they come with great frequency, beginning in Chapter One, as Gabriel rescues Sheba McCoy from the clutches of DeGroet, a rich Hungarian, who kidnapped her in an effort to get her to assist him in a quest for a secret treasure. The plot involves the chase for the treasure, with both Gabriel and Sheba being captured by DeGroet, and escaping several times until the end.

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Leisure Books/Hard Case Crime
May 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8439-6246-8
Paperback, 226 pp., $6.99

When a stunningly beautiful woman with a slight Hispanic accent barely has a chance to introduce herself as she approaches Michael Hunt at a Metropolitan Museum of Art reception in honor of a new exhibit on loan from the Hunt Foundation, neither Michael nor his brother, Gabriel, could know it would precipitate gunfire and the woman’s kidnapping. Michael is described as “shorter, younger, and studious-looking rather than ruggedly handsome” and “accustomed to paling into insignificance next to his more dynamic older brother.” Gabriel is decidedly the more adventurous of the two: “He would find Mariella Montez, and he would find out what was behind her kidnapping, and the attack at the museum, and he wouldn’t stop looking until he did.”

Gabriel’s search takes him from Florida to Mexico to the jungles of Central America. But even before that quest can begin, the action immediately goes into high gear [no pun intended] with a high-speed chase over the East River on the Queensboro Bridge, and doesn’t let up till Gabriel’s mission is accomplished.

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