Skeleton Coast, by Clive Cussler and Jack DuBrul

This is a thriller set in Namibia and Congo involving the beautiful Sloane McIntyre, who is looking for lost diamonds in the Skeleton Coast, and the ruggedly handsome but lame (as in pirate lame) Juan Cabrillo who commands the Oregon, an ultra sophisticated and powerful boat camouflaged as a decrepit old vessel. They fight rebel armies and a rogue group of mad environmentalists (ah, those darn long haired, patchouli wearing, pot smoking, gender vague, vegan environmentalists!) And everything progresses in a pile of cliches that makes one wonder why would the book need two authors.

Sloan is strong, but to Juan she takes second seat. He, an ex-CIA man who deals arms for strange motives, sails under an Iranian flag, hides an extra gun in his prosthetic leg and is never wrong, inspires different variations of lust from the girl or his crew. In Skeleton Coast, fight scenes are described as if drawing storyboards for the movie, with only two options. One, the good guys kill or capture all enemies. Two, through betrayal or some other unforeseen act, they get captured. There is no in between. Or, actually, there is a long in between where the authors (again, two? really?) notate in minute detail every bullet trajectory, each contortion of every body, all destruction of man made or nature props. With an actual book, I could have turned the pages and skipped all this. With a digital recording, my mind went to the grocery list or the last office quibble while waiting for each choreographed set of acrobatic moves to end. Much as in bad sex.

Which brings me to the book reader, Scott Brick. Everything Mr. Brick reads sounds like a bodice ripping romance. The crescendoes. The almost whispered lows. The quickening of the pace. The pauses. The pathos. Again and again. There are no ordinary paragraphs. There is no concession to the reader's ability to interpret the words. He booms them for you. And as with the lover who has grown repetitive and stale, the mind does recede into its own thoughts waiting for it to be over.

Which is how I felt about the whole book.