Customer Reviews

Of Beryl & Alabaster

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This is a book for the lover of puzzles. Are you challenged by the brain twisters in the Sunday paper or Sudoku for the advanced player? If so, the author will take you along while his two main protagonists twist through the far-eastern myths in search of the Beryl stone that magically displays the unsolvable solutions of the old Silk Road. Within the legends, are hidden treasures of unimaginable wealth in gemstones, guarded for generations by the mountain clans preserving their Royals.
The element of historical fiction emanates as behind these clans, still being fought today in the peaks and valleys of the Himalayans of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, there seems to always be the obscure power of China. China, the one empire which has not completely fallen, strangled by its own obsession with power, but has progressed to being the nation that still controls the world from the same obscurity. China, where today, there is much new to shroud the crumbling relics of another time. Yet still, the Great Wall remains. In Mr. Wolf's book you will venture behind and into those walls and myths. With still no real understanding of what went, and goes, on there. World leaders can't figure it out.
Mr. Wolf has an uncanny ability with imagery and scene-setting. I begin at the edge of an ancient well. Instantly, I felt a hesitation at venturing farther and an ethereal feeling of choking on dust. It was that real! Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which urges you tend to follow, I'm thrust into an odorous street in Dwarka, a slum of New Delhi, India. Before, I get adjusted to the new environment, bodies are dropping around me as I prepare to enter an old gem store. Suddenly, I find myself in a rather dull office in Washington DC where my soon to be co-protagonist is lamenting a failing love affair.
The preceding is a necessary set-up considering this a rapidly moving plot that must get me to another house in London where the other co-protagonist, a genealogist, resides with his housekeeper who rules with an iron fist. This projection turns out to be paramount as I'm about to be launched into a pack of, again obscurely, renowned Global gem thieves. This does seem to be the case when a treasured and mysterious, long-missing and crucial gemstone surfaces from the underworld. Today's Internet is a less than comparable line of communication. Now, we puzzle solvers must really get to work.
If you are intrigued by fast-moving, multiple-pieced mind games, Beryl is for you. If you are a Genealogy or far-eastern history buff, this is your book. If you have an ability to grasp onto numerous foreign names and characters from countries whose names no longer exist, I challenge you to solve this puzzle. If you are a lover of sequels because all your solutions come up wrong, I challenge Mr. Wolf to write one comparable. If you're an esoteric like me, you'll linger in the incredible imagery.

Susan Haley, Author/Editor
RAINY DAY PEOPLE
FIBERS IN THE WEB

This was a fast read and it took you to places you only dream about. It taught you about jewels and jewels thieves. It was a fat read an adventure, mystery and so creative that you will not know what hit you when you read this book. The author is really talented. Expect the unexpected and hang on for the ride.
Linda Meckler

When you're feeling the time is right for zig zagging across continents, while sorting out a plot as complex as a twister in the midst of a midnight storm, the time will be right to delve within the covers of Of Beryl and Alabaster. But be sure you are wide awake, or you are likely to miss one of its rapid turn of events.

READY: Buckle your seat belt and hold fast to the restraining bar.

SET: You are about to be propelled forward through a series of twists, thrusts and upending turns.

GO: Stay alert. Chart the characters. Follow their travels and travails.

FINALE: If you follow these instructions with care, a splendid adventure will unfold before your very eyes!

This is not a shoot 'em up, car chase of a novel, but your mind will slide through fast plot turns. In fact, there are more twists and turns in this intrigue than a cobra has coils. Most of them are just as deadly, with spitting venom from some of the main characters. Intelligently written by a most creative mind. Obviously, a great deal of research went into Of Beryl and Alabaster and I learned much fascinating cultural information. The novel provides a wealth of data about India, enough for two books. And if you weren't aware that the old Silk Road is still viable in this century, you will be after you read this tale. The buyer can read the novel fast to find out rightaway what happens next, or slow down a bit to savor the details and the flavors. Either way you'll discover great storytelling!

OF BERYL AND ALABASTER is an intelligent, elegantly fashioned cops and robbers tale of a London gem heist that transits the Silk Road into Iran, up through the Taklimakan Desert, down to New Delhi, then on to the Bay of Bengal and China.

John Wolf has conceived a multiplicity of fascinating characters to populate his tale. Not the least of which are James Hathaway, a patrician denizen of the U.K. who makes a handsome living tracing and locating obscure family lines with money to hide. He's assisted by friend Rupert Donaldson, of Washington, D.C, an historical journalist by trade and part-time sleuth upon occasion. An abrupt visit from one Joomla Matumba, ex-diamond cutter from Kenya, awakens their joint interest.

Matumba, a genuine scallywag, claims affiliation with the African Security Police and Interpol; he purports to be on the trail of Max Schneider, a jewel thief implicated in a major diamond robbery in London and a murder in a town outside New Delhi, India. Matumba says this Schneider possesses the Tashi Beryl, an historical gem worth a fortune and wants to hire Hathaway and Donaldson to locate the rest of the family gem stash - a nice chunk of reward money the object....

Well, you get the idea. Before the story ends we meet Bai-huang, the dragon-lady; Li Ang, a part of the baffling Rajani heritage; and smoothie Jessie Morgan - diamond thief extraordinaire and partner of Max (Ritter) Schneider. And we're just getting started meeting Mr. Wolf's fascinating host of characters....

You'd better have your reading boots on. There's complex action aplenty in this tale. John Wolf seamlessly flips points of view, paints settings and the mechanics of gem thefts with a deft brush - exhibiting a gift for natural and spot-on dialogue all the while. Personally, I could have done with a few less minor characters; it wouldn't have dented Mr. Wolf's story one bit and might have furthered the pace.

All told, OF BERYL AND ALABASTER will provide you with plenty of reading excitement and entertainment.

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