Skyring Water by Louis L'Amour and Beau L'Amour

Rating: 4 star rating

This Cold War spy thriller will completely surprise you, if you only know Louis L'Amour for his old Westerns. This story is set in 1961, and starts off with an ex-Navy salvage diver named Mike Fowler, discovers his partner, a German scientist with a dark WWII past, standing over a dead blackmailer. 

They uncover a secret. The location of 30 tons of stolen Nazi gold hidden inside a sunken submarine at the bottom of the ocean. This turns into a global cat and mouse chase. They have to put a diving team together while running for their lives from the CIA, Israeli spies, and a creepy underground Nazi group. The story takes you all over the place; from France and Venezuela to a freezing island right in the Skyring Water region off the coast of Patagonia, South America.

The story itself was good, but honestly, I think it could have been better. My biggest issue is that the book gets way too detailed. It felt like every time a gun or a boat was brought out, the story stopped to give me the exact make, model, and mechanical history. Unless you are a total military or submarine nerd, a lot of this talking just slows the pacing down. 

The book does a great job showing that finding a massive treasure isn't always a blessing. The characters quickly hint at the idea that 30 tons of cursed Nazi bullion might just be an inescapable trap that puts a permanent target on their backs. The final act turns into a brutal, cold fight for survival as they close in on the wreck, and it becomes a question of whether anyone will even make it off that freezing island alive.  

It's a cool, old-school adventure book that the author's son, Beau L'Amour, finished decades after his dad started it. It’s worth a read, just be prepared to skim through a lot of heavy technical descriptions.

Thank you, NetGalley, Ballantine, and the authors Louis L'Amour and Beau L'Amour, for the book review consideration. All opinions are my own.

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