AIRSHIP HUNTERS
By Jim Beard & Duane Spurlock
Meteor House
210 pages
It’s 1897 and the 19th
Century is coming to an end. America, still
rebuilding from the ruinous Civil War, is on the cusp of the Industrial
Revolution. Things look bright for the
future until mysterious reports of strange flying aircraft begin to filter into
Washington.
Staring from sightings on the west coast, these viewings begin springing up in
an eastward route until they become weekly occurrences in the skies over America’s
heartland.
Unable to ignore the public’s fears
as fueled by exploitation newspapers, two young men are sent to investigate
different aspects of this phenomenon; Army Lt. Valiantiene and Treasury Agent
Cabot. All they manage to uncover is yet
more mysteries such as the appearance of strange, counterfeit gold coins in the
vicinity of the airship sightings and the brutal slaying of innocent country
people at the hands of monsters that tear their victims apart as if they were
rag dolls. Can these beasts also be
connected to the weird skyships?
About this time, both men are
introduced to each other and told they are to work together as the first
operatives in a new branch of the Secret Service to be known as A-23 Aero Marshals. Up until this juncture, the book had been a
straight mystery novel but once Cabot and Valiantine join forces, their
burgeoning relationship adds the much needed fun part of the entire adventure
and easily sets up the following series of events the two must content with and
overcome.
If we have one critique with “Airship
Hunters,” it is that the publisher should have announced somewhere on the
covers that this was only the opening chapter of a series and that the main
mysteries that set everything in motion are actually not solved by the book’s
end. Which is a minor cheat, but still a
cheat. You see, we liked this
introduction to Cabot and Valiantine and are eagerly going to be awaiting the
next chapter of this saga regardless. We’d
strongly urge you to join us.
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