Book Review - Plunder of the Sun by David Dodge

First published in 1949 Plunder of the Sun by David Dodge has been newly published (2005) by Hard Case Crime (HCC - 010).

The Hard Case crime website describes the book like this:

"Al Colby should never have agreed to smuggle the package from Chile to Peru. Now one man’s dead, two beautiful women have betrayed him, and a couple of gunmen are hot on his trail. All because of an ancient Quechua manuscript pointing to the hiding place of a priceless hoard of gold, lost for centuries. Now the race is on — by train, by plane, by motorboat and by mule — first to find the treasure and then to escape with it alive..."

It was a good read. However, the main character, Colby, was a bit of a putz: he was double crossed, beaten, tied up and otherwise outwitted at just about every turn. He certainly was tenacious but the amount of times he came out the looser in situations made it a bit distracting. Indiana Jones her certainly was not.

Still, I never lost interest and that is the real test of a book.