Review: Zandri's New Adventure Series Begin
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 3, 2014
The Shroud Key is kind of a departure for Vincent Zandri, who, although he's a versatile writer, is more widely known for his dark crime fiction. This one, though, is a straight up, Indiana Jones-style adventure story, and Zandri pulls it off very nicely. His hero, Chase Baker, is an author, tour guide in Italy, and incurable ladies man who gets drawn into a hunt for that most fabled of Biblical archaeological relics-- the bones of Jesus himself.Dan Brown territory, you might be thinking. Maybe so, but Zandri is a much stronger writer than Brown, and he also has a sense of humor. Although the stakes are high in The Shroud Key, I got a nice sense that Zandri was grinning the entire time he was writing it, that he was having a blast.Chase Baker is a rogue, and a bit of a scoundrel-- he has a fondness for other men's wives, for instance-- and at first you probably won't be sure if you like him. But as the novel moves along at its breakneck clip, more facets of Chase's personality emerge, and you realize there's more to him than what initially meet the eye. He's a flawed but ultimately decent hero. I'm looking forward to his next adventure.