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Dark Gold [Hardcover]

David Angsten (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)


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Book Description

June 27, 2006
Three college buddies, two ravishing shipmates, a wealthy yachtsman (and plenty of Mexican tequila) combine and combust in this thrilling tale of a search for sunken treasure--and survival against an awesome creature of the sea.
 
After graduating college, Jack Duran and his two best friends, Rock and Duff, are looking forward to a carefree trip around the globe--a last stab at freedom before tackling the "real world."  But when Jack's vagabond brother, Dan, vanishes in Mexico, they head off instead for Puerto Vallarta on a mission to find him.
 
Following Dan's trail of shady dealings, and fueled by a potent Mexican tequila, they soon join forces with a Bahamian yachtsman--a charismatic eccentric with a mysterious past--and become hopelessly enamored with his two enticing shipmates. Sailing down the jungle-covered coast of Mexico, they discover that Dan was searching for a 19th-century shipwreck reputedly laden with gold. When they finally locate the sunken wreck in the bay of a remote fishing village, they enter its eerie, black waters and begin their hunt for the treasure.
 
But, one by one, the divers begin to appear
 
Jack soon discovers that a mysterious leviathan seems to be guarding the wreck.  Could it be the fabled Diablo Blanco--a deadly local legend come to life?  Blinded by the prospect of untold riches, Jack pursues his harrowing quest to the very brink of the abyss, bringing him finally face-to-face with an awesome, mythical terror.
 
A fast-paced, high-adventure thriller reminiscent of The Deep and The Beach, Dark Gold is the hair-raising tale of a lost ship, a dark obsession, and a terrifying denizen of the deep.
 
"I sat down with Angsten's thriller in the afternoon, and I was still reading at 2 A.M.  Dark Gold builds to a frantic and explosive climax."
--Royce Buckingham, author of Demon Keeper.
 
"Taut and well-crafted.  I couldn't put it down."
--John Scott Shepherd, author of Henry's List of Wrongs and The Dead Father's Guide to Sex & Marriage, and screenwriter for Joe Somebody and Life or Something Like It
 
"Sunken treasure, exotic locations, adventure and intrigue on the high seas, and a dark and disturbing undercurrent of mystery that H.P. Lovecraft himself would have been proud of are all key ingredients of David Angsten's first class roller-coaster of a novel."
--Nick Redfern, author of Three Men Seeking Monsters

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Take a quest to find a lost brother, hot sex with incredibly beautiful babes, a giant man-eating beast that may or may not be a god, a sunken ship and a fortune in gold. Throw in some evil, demented villagers and a pirate or two, place these plot elements into the hands of a stylish, intelligent writer, and you've got yourself a page-turner that will take readers back to the days when a good book meant you stayed up all night under the covers with a flashlight. Jack Duran heads to Mexico with his two pals, Duff and Rock, on the first leg of what they plan as an around-the-world adventure. Their immediate goal is to find Jack's errant brother, Dan, who has been missing for months. They become involved in a treasure hunt led by the mysterious Leopold Bellocheque, a Bahamian businessman with a fancy yacht and the aforementioned babes as his crew. The hunt quickly develops disastrous and deadly consequences. Screenwriter Angsten's tall tale is for grown-up boys who lust for swashbuckling literary adventure set in tropical climes. Extra batteries for that flashlight are recommended. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Sunken treasure, gorgeous women, and a nightmarish sea creature…luridly readable."
--Entertainment Weekly 
 
"Take another look at this book's cover. What's hidden inside will make your eyes widen."
--David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of Creepers

"A page-turner…for grown-up boys who lust for swashbuckling literary adventure… will take readers back to the days when a good book meant you stayed up all night under the covers with a flashlight."
--Publishers Weekly
 
"[A] pastiche of Crichton, Lovecraft, Jules Verne, and Robinson Crusoe."
--Entertainment Weekly
 
 "I sat down with Angsten's thriller this afternoon, and I was still reading at two A.M. Dark Gold builds to a frantic and explosive climax."
--Royce Buckingham, author of Demon Keeper
 
"Taut and well-crafted. I couldn't put it down."
--John Scott Shepherd, author Henry's List of Wrongs and The Dead Father's Guide to Sex & Marriage, and screenwriter for Joe Somebody and Life or Something Like It
 
"Thrills and chills…sunken gold, black magic, sea monsters, a beautiful Brazilian in a bikini--what more could you want from a summer thriller?"
--Kirkus Reviews
 
"A first-class roller-coaster ride of a novel."
--Nick Redfern, author of Three Men Seeking Monsters

"Like Benchley's Jaws, David Angsten's debut will once again chase swimmers out of the water. Fraught with shivering suspense and a hauntingly eerie atmosphere, Dark Gold grips with feverish intensity. As literate as it is frightening. Read it with both a silver cross and a speargun at your side."
--James Rollins, the New York Times bestselling author of Map of Bones and Black Order

 
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (June 27, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0312343736
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312343736
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,045,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

For bio, interviews, picture galleries, and more information related to David's books, please visit www.davidangsten.com

 

Customer Reviews

34 Reviews
5 star:
 (20)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
 (3)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (34 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A menacing and atmospheric thriller!, September 25, 2006
This review is from: Dark Gold (Hardcover)
I love a good thriller, especially if it has an exotic location, a sunken treasure, sexy characters, and all kinds of menace. Dark Gold delivers all the above and more.

The story opens with three college grads, Jack, Rock, and Duff, about to embark on a world tour, a last hurrah before they have to get serious about real life. However, Jack's wandering older brother Dan has gone missing somewhere in Mexico. The last anyone has heard from him was an enigmatic postcard from Puerto Vallarta four months ago. So the three friends decide to start their trip in Mexico to hunt down Dan. As readers of The Ruins will attest, these quests never end well.

Early on, Jack has a scary encounter with a drug-dealing biker gang. No one will admit to knowing anything about Dan, but Jack does learn the name of a town that doesn't mean anything to him---Punta Perdida. None of the locals are willing to ferry Jack, Duff, and Rock there to investigate, for any price. But fate (and a beautiful woman) leads them to Leo Bellocheque, a wealthy Caribbean Islander with a million dollar yacht and a drop-dead gorgeous crew of two. Leo's intrigued by their story and offers them a lift.

Punta Perdida is a dangerous place. The local priest has been deafened and muted. Things aren't looking at all good for Dan. But Jack and his friends soon discover what enticed Dan to this desolate location; the lure of a fortune in sunken gold. Of course, in a place like Punta Perdida, you never know what else might be in the water...

I don't want to tell any more, because the joy of a novel like this is the plotting. The story is fast-paced and offered me big, gasp-out-loud surprises right up to the very end. There are definitely elements of the story that are familiar from many other books and films, but Angsten has done a great job making familiar thriller conventions seem fresh and new.

A big part of it is the writing, which is way above average. It's a pleasure to read a thriller with a nice turn of phrase and characters with real depth to them. I often felt a desire to learn more about these people and their back stories that wasn't always satisfied. You can't complain too loudly, though, about characters being overly interesting.

In the heading of this review I used the words menacing and atmospheric, which sound a lot better than creepy. But the truth of the matter is that Angsten creeped me out. Never has Mexico seemed more foreign or scarier. Seriously, I began to feel a little worried about my own friends down there! And just reading an underwater scene about something that's never seen during an early dive in the novel had the hair on the back of my neck standing up.

I read this book in two days. This is good and bad. I want more! I can't wait to see what Angsten comes up with next. What a great new discovery!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling Read...Yet Oddly Unsatisfying, November 17, 2007
By 
This review is from: Dark Gold (Mass Market Paperback)
This is a difficult book to review. From the moment I began reading, I was hooked for the first 200 pages or so in that "I don't want to put it down" phase. Then the story began languishing a bit until picking up steam to tie all the loose ends together in a bloody finale. The last 150 pages kept me strangely uneasy as everything became predictable and some very hard to believe underwater SCUBA episodes left me laughing.

The book is essentially about 3 friends who postpone a world adventure to go to Puerto Vallarta in search of Jack Duran's wandering shiftless brother, Dan. They encounter a series of characters in a series of violent incidents before finally ending up on an expensive yacht with two beautiful women and a mysterious Caribbean who may or may not know something about Jack's brother. Ultimately there is a search for long lost sunken gold complicated by deadly sea creatures, modern day pirates, and double crosses. The nearby islanders are scary individuals who participate in African satanic rituals and who certainly have no interest in helping the gold seekers. What mysteries do they hide? There is more blood spilled in this novel than seemingly in the Civil War.

What can you say about a thriller that includes drug dealing biker gangs, menacing thugs and locales, beautiful women in bikinis, satanic rituals, black magic, sea monsters, sunken treasure, double and triple crosses, mysterious characters, and bloody action sequences? You can see why your interest initially builds and builds until the payoff becomes cloudier and cloudier.

"Dark Gold" is well written and edited. The pacing is furious at times and languid at other times. There is a great deal of action but Jack Duran, the protagonist, is the most clumsy or unlucky man in literature as he suffers every sort of bump, scrape, wound, beating, and stabbing imaginable--by books end, I was calling the blood bank to get him help.
Perhaps the murkiest aspects of this novel were the underlying existential questions concerning personal and group values and mores that were explored and dissected throughout the action...and often in a very unsubtle manner. What constitutes the soul of a man? How much is a human life worth...or a breath of air when underwater with gold in your hands and diminishing air in your tank? Can a life of aimless wandering be redeemed? What will a son do for a mother's love? The questions and existential dilemmas continue endlessly. All in all, a strong 3 star read.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars H.P. Lovecraft meets James Crumley, July 5, 2006
This review is from: Dark Gold (Hardcover)
This excellent novel is a difficult book to quantify: Part mystery, part travelogue, part historical novel, part horror yarn, and all thriller.

Usually such an effort slops to the floor an unreadable mishmash. Not so Angsten. It's hard to believe this is a debut novel given Angsten's deft handling of the various threads in his storyline.

This book grabs you and holds you; I even took *Dark Gold* with me to a Fourth of July fireworks show.

A young college grad takes two friends and looks for his older sibling while enjoying a great adventure now school is over. While traipsing through Mexico, they pick up the older boy's trail as well as a travelling millionaire yacthsman whose two companions are drop dead gorgeous women.

After one of the adventurers is beaten and slashed, it becomes apparent there's something sinister in the older brother's disappearance. The adventurers trail the missing lad to an insular, mysterious and violently xenophobic village where it appears the missing young man likely lost his life.

Angsten's world is dark and murky, peopled with beauty and malice, gold and monsters, love and betrayal. It's been a long time since I've read a novel as thoroughly absorbing as this effort. Well done!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
It must be the heat that gets them going. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Punta Perdida, Puerto Vallarta, Diablo Blanco, Captain Braga, Hector Bellocheque, San Francisco, Idi Amin, Key Largo, Los Vagos, Eva Yerbabuena, Sand Fly Beach, Tennessee Williams, Florida Keys, Lady Liberty, Mexican Indian, Mexico City, New York, Playa de los Muertos, Third World
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