Twining, James. The Black Sun. Not a winner. The first chapter doesn't mention the main characters, so I didn't realize I'd read Twining's first novel Double Eagle until the second chapter when Tom Kirk, Archie, and Dominique begin making their appearances. Kirk, a former art thief, is drawn into a strange conspiracy that involves the disappearance of two cars from the Hungarian Gold Train, loaded with gold and art looted by the Nazis at the end of WWII (now this is a fascinating actual event that deserves better fiction to accommodate it) . The convoluted conspiracy/conspiracies in the novel also include brief references to the fabled Amber Room, another treasure stolen by the Germans that disappeared at the end of the war and which has inspired a number of theories about whether or not it was destroyed in a fire or remains hidden in a salt or silver mine somewhere in Germany.The Gold Train and the Amber Room deserve better.
Fiction. Thriller. 2006. 416 pages.
Have you seen the Amber Room in its current state? The way that they combined the colours kind of looks like someone got sick all over the walls. :( It's really unfortunate!
ReplyDeleteI am sorry this one turned out to be such a disappointment. I have never heard of it or the author.
ReplyDeleteEva - There is only a small piece of the original Amber Room left; it was given to President Putin, I believe. There is a reproduction somewhere, though.
ReplyDeleteL.F. - There are always disappointments, but I've had so many good ones lately that I don't mind too much! :)
The reproduction is in the same place that the original once was: the tsarskoe tselo. But it's not nearly as pretty.
ReplyDeleteeva - I don't suppose anyone could afford to reproduce anything as costly as the original, but I guess the effort counts!
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