Product Description

A centuries-old, cursed pirate's treasure valued at over $2 billion lies deep within the treacherous waters off the coast of Maine. Men who have attempted to unearth the fortune have suffered gruesome deaths. Will a high-tech expedition meet the same fate? National ads, including "USA Today.".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12663 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 496 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The authors' first and bestselling thriller, The Relic, hit the lists in part for its clever exploitation of an extraordinary settingAthe American Museum of Natural History. Just so, their fourth novel (after Reliquary) makes sprightly use of Nova Scotia's Oak Island and its notorious Money PitAhere transplanted to offshore Maine as the Water Pit on Ragged Island. The novel opens with a brisk recap of often fatal efforts over the past 200 years to recover a fabled treasureAnow worth $2 billion and including a mysterious relic, St. Michael's SwordAhidden by English pirate Edward Ockham in the Water Pit. The difficulty is that the Pit, nearly 200 feet deep, was designed to flood and to kill through booby traps anyone trying to broach the treasure. Into this nifty setup steps Martin Hatch, returning to Ragged Island 25 years after his brother and father died in the Pit. Hatch is back as part of a massive expedition attempting a high-tech assault on the Pit. Brash melodrama ensues as expedition members suffer various gory accidents and as Hatch realizes that the Sword possesses a quality that may kill the entire expedition. The novel suffers from a diffusion of villainsAthe authors variously demonize the Pit, the Pit's designer, the crazed expedition leader and the SwordAand from workaday prose and assembly-line characters (a computer nerd, a sexy French archeologist, a righteous minister). Machine-gun pacing, startling plot twists and smart use of legend, scientific lore (including cyptanalysis) and the evocative setting carry the day, however, resulting in an exciting boys' adventure tale for adults that's bound to be one of most popular of the summer reads. Film rights optioned by Arnold Kopelson; foreign rights sold in eight countries; simultaneous Time Warner audio. (July) FYI: The mystery of Oak Island and its Money Pit has been detailed in several books (e.g., D'arcy O'Conner's The Money Pit, 1978). The Pit, target over the past two centuries of numerous failed expeditions costing millions of dollars and six lives, is variously rumored to contain Captain Kidd's treasure, Incan gold and even the Holy Grail.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Yo ho ho?get ready for a ripping good yarn! Dr. Malin Hatch is at first reluctant to let the Thalassa Group plunder his Ragged Island, off the coast of Maine, in yet another attempt to reclaim pirate Red Ned Ockham's 17th-century treasure. But its leaders assure him that they have the technology and skill to breach the deadly Water Pit that has claimed the lives of countless treasure hunters. They also have the encrypted diary of the Pit's designer, which, they claim, holds the key to the treasure's reclamation. But does it? This nonstop action adventure has all the elements of a perfect summertime thriller?pirate treasure of unimaginable worth, 300-year-old cryptograms written in invisible ink, a legendary curse, and a driven captain who will stop at nothing to reach his goal. The red-hot authors of Reliquary (LJ 5/1/97) score another big winner. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.
-?Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Lib., Hammond, IN
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The authors of The Relic (1995) and Reliquary turn their eyes seaward in a thrilling page-turner about buried treasure on a massively booby-trapped island off the coast of Maine. (This feature of the yarn has a real, historical model, Oak Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, but its defenses have not exacted anything close to the body count that Preston and Child's Ragged Island does.) The book begins in an orthodox manner, with the owner of the island, who lost his brother to one of the booby traps 30 years ago, being urged by a mysterious but well-financed high-tech treasure hunter to open the island to yet another expedition. High-tech proves no protection against the island's increasingly lethal defenses, and the climactic struggle that takes up the whole last third of the book is entirely gripping. Preston and Child have put more effort into hardware and pacing than into characterization, and there are lapses in their knowledge of the sea, but fans of Peter Benchley and Clive Cussler, as well as thriller aficionados in general, will find this entertaining reading. The demand for this book may also increase as a result of marketing intended to take advantage of Titanic fever and a possible reader rush to anything smelling even vaguely of saltwater. Roland Green

Customer Reviews

OK mystery
High-school level writing, OK mystery, amateurish character development, fun action. It was alright, that's it.

Fun read albeit you knew the outcome
Love these authors together, always a great little read that will keep you going back for more. Still have to say the Pendergast novels are the very best...so more of them if you please! You'll enjoy it...take it to the beach or on an airplane...you won't be bored.

Well written, but
It was a great premise. Good characters and an easy to read style that kept me turning the pages. However, I kept waiting for the book to really start. I was expecting something spectacular to come with the turn of the next page. As the amount of pages left began to dwindle it became apparent that it would never come. There was a twist to the story. One in which I saw coming well before it was revealed.