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The airlines are on strike, which is the reason Brandon Drake is sailing to Crete. He's on the trail of a French conman who sells stakes in a government program for funding archaeological research. The Frenchman has disappeared, which is making Drake's clients nervous. Also sailing to Crete is Dr Sarah Sanderson, on her way to an apprenticeship with the famed Dr Pietro Perezia and his excavation of a site which is probably the home of King Minos. The legend of the Minotaur is very relevant, and is told by Dr Sanderson in great detail to Brandon Drake one tipsy evening after they have danced themselves into exhaustion. Sarah Sanderson is fairly young, pretty, and naive. She is also very wealthy, and determined to make it on her skill as an archaeologist rather than on her monetary assets. There are odd happenings on board ship. Drake doesn't know if they are connected to his work, or to Sarah's, but they give him pause for thought. Things get no tidier when everyone gets to Crete. Brandon makes friends with some locals (very quickly, I might add); keeps trying to find Dr Achille Desormeau; and pursues Sarah, in spite of the very mixed messages she is sending. Perezia's wife Danna is a brassy blonde, ostensibly from California, who wants to add Drake to her long list of paramours. He's not interested, although the repartee is amusing. Sarah wants to buckle down to work with Dr Perezia. He wants all the work out of her he can get, and as many of her non-working hours as he can persuade her to part with. There are some amusing confrontations between Perezia and Drake -- at least amusing to the reader, although uncomfortable for Sarah. Rampant testosterone is not always a delight to be around. FINAL LABYRINTH is a blend of mystery, thriller, and mostly tepid romance as it happens to an information collector, a high-tech reference librarian and a database detective. Drake is a well-rounded character, one I'd like to have on my side in a crunch. FINAL LABYRINTH moves very slowly for most of the book, which is not a good pace for a thriller. This book would benefit greatly from some judicious editing, mostly of overblown and/or purple prose every now and then, and definitely of the sex scene(s). If one skims those chunks, FINAL LABYRINTH moves along fairly well, and does pick up the pace in the last hundred pages or so. I found it surprisingly compelling at the end, although the last four chapters should have been compressed into one. FINAL LABYRINTH is the third Brandon Drake mystery, with another one on the way. BARREL PROOF takes place in a Kentucky bourbon distillery. INTIMATE FALLS begins with a fatal rock climbing accident in Yosemite Valley. NO SECRETS has Drake on a special contract in Japan. So Drake gets around, both in locale and in variety of cases. Good plots, good characters, good writing for the most part but needs work on pace and editing. While I won't bump Rucker to the top of my list, I'd read any of his other stuff knowing that I'll be skimming parts of it.
Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, November 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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