Historical Fiction
My latest book review is up, and fans of Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will find much to enjoy in Joseph Theroux’s latest work, Revenge of The Sea Wolf.
The yarn unspools a mash-up of murder mystery, seafaring adventure, Pacific island treasure-hunting, and literary biography: Jack London and Lloyd Osbourne, stepson and co-author of Robert Louis Stevenson.
The title sets the premise plain enough. Theroux’s plot pits Alexander McLean—purported model for London’s notorious captain Wolf Larsen of The Sea Wolf—against his crew 8 years after their 1898 South Seas voyage aboard the Sophia Sutherland.
Mystery and adventure will keep readers turning the pages, & Theroux adds rich layers of historic detail, authenticity, and curiosity to the narrative
London and Osbourne team up much as Holmes and Watson to help a San Francisco detective solve a series of murders carried out by McLean’s assassins, whom the tabloids dub “the Gas Pipe Gang” (they whack their victims over the head with a pipe wrapped in newspaper).
Complicating the investigation, the murders take place amid the rubble and chaos of an earthquake that rattled San Francisco in 1906. Indeed, when Osbourne stumbles upon the first victim, he suspects the man was killed by falling debris.
Ben East Books 
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