Treasure of Saint-Lazare

***Please note that I received this book as an Advanced Reader Copy through Goodreads***<br /><br />Yikes, where do I start? I received this book a few months ago but never got around to reading it. I did enter to win this book on the premise of mystery, stolen art, and France, with a WWII twist. Perhaps I should've kept putting it off.<br /><br />Let me preface this by saying that I understand this was an Advanced Reader Copy (and oftentimes these ARCs have spelling errors, typos, etc. They typically haven't gone through final proofreading and I understand that.) But this book? It was terribly written. I had to re-read lines and paragraphs frequently to find out the location of a particular scene. Dialogue was terrible because I could hardly tell who was speaking the lines. <br /><br /><br />As a <i>very</i> general example:<br /><br />"Blah, blah, blah"<br /><br />"Blah, blah, blah"<br /><br />"Blah, blah, blah"<br /><br /><br /><br />Instead of:<br /><br />"Blah, blah, blah" said Eddie.<br /><br />"Blah, blah, blah" Jen interrupted.<br /><br />Eddie countered, "blah, blah blah".<br /><br /><br />Now, <i>that</i> I can tell who said what AND I get a sense of how the characters are feeling. This book had none of that.<br /><br />I'm no writer, but I've taken an English class or two and I have a general idea of how sentence structure works. This author must not have an editor. Within a span of two sentences, two characters are outside a building having a conversation, in a car driving toward another destination, and then swiping a keycard, with nothing to link the three actions together.<br /><br />At that point, I found the poor writing to be so distracting that I couldn't finish the book. I had no desire to find out what happened to the characters or how the mystery was solved. The two romantic (I guess?) leads had no chemistry and there were so many peripheral charachters, I had to keep flipping back to other pages to remember who this person was. All this, and I was only 67 pages into a 300 page book.<br /><br />Would I recomment this book to anyone? Only as an example of what not to do with your first novel. The author, John Pearce, definitely has room to grow and could probably end up with a good book someday. But this one isn't it.

Top Notch Mystery-Thriller. <br /><br />As other reviewers have noted, this first novel by John Pearce strongly reminds one of the James Bond books by Ian Fleming. A solid, action-oriented hero, hard nosed yet reflective; a cast of dastardly villains bordering on psychopaths; smart, attractive and mysterious women; well-painted travelogues to exotic locales (in this case, Paris and Florida); all moved along by plenty of realistic action and intrigue. <br /><br />Highly recommended for readers who like military adventures and spy thrillers.

Blending art history with murder and suspense makes for a meaty thriller. When Jen,the daughter of a man killed in a hit and run in Florida arrives in Paris to deliver a letter from the dead man to Eddie,the son of his army buddy, the letter leads them to a search for a missing Raphael painting that may have been stolen by the Nazis during WWII.<br /><br />Their search is hampered by attempts on their lives, even as they journey between Sarasota and Paris. As they dig deeper into their fathers' pasts when they served with each other in the army and their stint as Monument Men, they unravel the identity of others who had known of this painting or had already been searching for it. As more information is uncovered, so does Eddie also realize that almost everyone he's met in the course of this investigation, has been lying or keeping things from him. The truth over his own father's death and that of his wife and son are shockingly revealed to him as well, and even Jen comes under suspicion.<br /><br />It's fast-paced thriller that I thought ended a little too soon. I would have liked this drawn out a little more, I think.

Face-paced thriller spanning the globe from Paris to the states, The Treasure of Saint-Lazare takes off with the hit and run murder of a former partner of Eddie Grant's father. The two men were Monument Men, American soldiers who attempted to recover stolen artwork from the Nazi's. Eddie and Jen, his former flame investigate the crime discovering it may be linked to a tragedy in Eddie's family from years ago. Reminiscent of Steve Berry's The Amber Room, Pearce takes the reader on an action-packed journey from Paris's glittering streets to Florida's Sarasota, the scene of the crime, searching for answers for the stolen artwork. A nice blend of history, art, and action.

The book will have you jumping from country to country in search of the truth. The author takes you on a man hunt with twists, valleys, and surprises that make your heart race. The attention to the little facts is what makes this novel a must read. I read it once and then waited a week and read it again and it was fascinating to see just how much I missed the first time around. I feel sue Mr. Pearce will be a successful writer. If you enjoy a travel adventure with exciting revelations then get this book NOW!

kindle freebie, 11/10/12

So I'm all over the place with my reading ?, and being on vacation in Cancun Mexico ?? doesn't hurt either.<br /><br />Lots of reading material, and the actual time to indulge myself. <br /><br />Why do I like novels like these?<br /><br />Treasure of Saint-Lazare, because it appeals to my travel and adventure side.<br /><br />I can always be guaranteed some intrigue. <br /><br />This novel does not disappoint. <br /><br />Lost paintings &amp; gold from Hitler 's Reich. <br /><br />Which was hidden to start the Third Reich if they were successful. Nah!<br /><br /><br />But you have members from time, still trying to find it &amp; people getting killed from the knowledge of it or who has gotten to close to finding this lost loot.<br /><br />So much intrigue....<br /><br />But you have to keep pushing, because people are dying for this.<br /><br />But Eddie needs to find it before the others. His loss is made worse, due to the recent murder of a family friend. <br /><br />Compounded by his previous loss of his father, then his wife &amp; daughter. <br /><br />His father &amp; the family friend were tracking down lost art &amp; gold the Nazi's stole during the war. <br /><br />Which is worth Billions, if it can be found. <br /><br />Eddie with the help of friends is determined to do just that.<br /><br />With the correspondence that went on between his father &amp; family friend, Eddie picks up where they left off.<br /><br />This search is not for the faint of heart. People are being killed over it.<br /><br />Eddie needs to find the lost loot and put this mystery to bed.<br /><br />It definitely kept my attention. <br /><br />I love a good mystery, and the author did an excellent job of creating the intrigue. <br /><br />Can't wait for the next one. <br /><br />Last Stop: Paris<br /><br />Until.....<br /><br />Happy Happy Reading ?!!!<br /><br />Ciao ?

Picked this up via the "Kindle Owners Lending Library" service through Amazon. Basically, you can borrow one book a month for free but you have to do so via your kindle device -- not an app. Anyway, this was my pick for October and I very much enjoyed it.<br /><br />It's a sort of historical treasure hunt, but with a splash of spy adventure novel. It's not deep but the story is good. It involves the search for a painting and possibly treasure that was stolen during WWII and hidden by the Nazis. No one is sure whether it was found and removed by American GIs or whether its still hidden. When an old flame shows up to the home of Eddie Grant with a cryptic message from her father to his it seems the hunt is back on. Suddenly the death several years earlier of his father and of his wife and kid, make Eddie realize that they might not have been the tragic accidents he was always told they were.<br /><br />It's shown as the first in a series -- not sure I'll continue, but maybe. I did enjoy it; but it didn't wow me.

I suppose if mysteries are your thing you might like this more than I did. I myself felt the story was pretty prosaic. Male lead of course gets every girl who even looks at him. Story is based on the Monument's men, the guys who tried to save art from the Nazi's and then spend a lot of time after the war trying to find what had been stolen... MOST of it from Jewish collectors, but some of it from museums. It must be remembered that Hitler was first and foremost a failed artist, so getting the art was a priority for him. What RUINES what was a ho-hum story anyway is the narrator of this audible version. In the beginning he did the narration voice like he was a computer (text to speech actually sounds better than that), only sounding human for the characters. And his female voice are ... borderline insulting. Everyone of them sounds like Marilyn Monroe or a drag queen.

The book started out good, but began to slow down in Sarasota. There was too much dialogue and too many characters. I found it hard to follow who was who. Eddie is not really my kind of hero -too much of a pantywaist - but he is acceptable and he is the gas that keeps the book going. I'm hoping he ups his game in future books.<br /><br />Strange family, the Grant family, but aren't all French families strange for an American? John Pearce brings that out in spades and that is one of the book's strong points. He also conveys the American feeling for Parisian places and customs. The question is, "Who cares about Parisian places and customs?" The answer is, "Probably I do because I liked this book." Good story, good atmosphere, pretty good characters, although slightly too eccentric. I see that John Pearce has written other Eddie Grant books and I'm going to buy another one.