A Man's Reach
Muse Creations (www.musecreations.com)
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REVIEW BY JOHN MESSER
Who hasn't fantasized about trading in the pressures of day-to-day living for an escape to some exotic beach? Or better still, dropping everything and sailing your own boat around the South Seas? Dale Welland, the hero of Canadian writer V.G. Oltmann's latest mystery, A Man's Reach, turns this fantasy into reality when he impulsively buys the world class ketch Far Reacher from Brent Markesson during a brief vacation in the small Mexican port of La Paz. Oltmann's title and the boat's name take on a broader meaning when a character recalls Robert Browning's observation that, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for." Welland first suspects that he has stepped into a problem when he returns to La Paz to pick up the Far Reacher and can't find his boat. Realizing he has been taken in by his own escape dream, Welland tracks down the boat only to discover that Brent Markesson has just been murdered and that the Mexican police are waiting to take him in for questioning about his connection with the Far Reacher and its late owner. His problems escalate when he learns that the boat may have been involved in drug trafficking and that Markesson lied about his dead wife, Catherine, who is still very much alive. She owns half of Far Reacher and doesnít want to let it go. Cleared of murder charges, Welland teams up with Catherine to get Far Reacher out of Mexico so they can find the rightful owner. Accompanied by a misfit crew of the experienced and the woefully inexperienced, the boat sets sail for San Francisco. The Far Reacher's trip proves anything but idyllic as she sails into heavy seas and begins to lose crew members. The tension mounts even faster than the storm and threatens to end in disaster for everyone. Oltmann's own boat experience shows through in the details of course plottings, crew assignments and the seamanship demands of extreme weather. Her descriptions are clear enough to familiarize the reader with every nook and cranny on the boat, and she demonstrates her mastery of not only suspense and world class yachtmanship, but also the electronic book medium. The fact that each of her previous 28 books was written under a pseudonym is, for her fans, frustrating, and enough to start this reviewer on a hunt to track those books down. John Messer is a frequent contributor to BookPage.
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