When I picked up this book I wasn’t expecting a literary masterpiece. I was hoping for something exciting, fun and maybe even a bit James Bond-like. Unfortunately I couldn’t help finding Spartan Gold extremely irritating and a bit dull.
While all the ingredients of an exciting plot were there – ancient gold, hidden secrets and Russian villains – none of them really ever seemed to satisfy. I’m not a literary snob. I enjoy trashy novels as much as anyone and I really wanted to be positive about this book. But it is unbelievably badly written, with characterisation that will make you wince.
In Spartan Gold Cussler introduces a new series of adventures based around the treasure hunters Sam and Remi Fargo. At first I thought that choosing a married couple as the stars of a thriller could be interesting, and a welcome change from the usual dashing, bed-hopping male protagonist. In reality, the Fargos are the some of the most annoying fictional characters I have ever come across. They are beautiful and stinking rich with first class degrees,; they take classes in judo, yoga, fencing and pilates. Although they are only in it for the thrill, they always donate their findings to a home for deprived children or sick puppies. Even worse than their offensively perfect lives is the terrible ‘flirty’ dialogue throughout as they quip their way through dangerous situations. Sam Fargo, it seems, always has time to remind his wife how sexy she is even when they are being pursued by gun-wielding Russian mafia members.
While Dan Brown might be criticised for writing trash, the non-stop mystery of The Da Vinci Code allowed you to ignore the worse points. Spartan Gold starts slowly: it is almost a hundred pages before Sam and Remi actually start jetting off around the world in search of wine from Napoleon’s mystery cellar. Cussler just didn’t manage to get me to care about the pursuit.
At least the detail is fun. There is everything you might want from such an adventure: hidden sea caves, and abandoned Nazi submarines with mysterious missions. It just didn’t seem to be all that interesting and I think that the narrative style has to be the main reason. Cussler’s approach replaces description with listing; when painting a picture of the Fargo’s luxury home, for example, the reader is bombarded with a list of the rooms on each floor, including the square footage and all technological equipment within. The text is scattered with annoying super-modern tech references. ‘Sam pulled out his iPhone’, ‘She tapped away on her Mac Book Pro’ etc. Is Cussler on the take from Steve Jobs?
What’s more, Cussler (and his editor) also seem to lack any knowledge of basic grammar. I’m not just being pedantic here. Throughout the novel, Cussler thinks that the past participle of ‘dive’ is ‘dove’ (‘He dove into the water’) and that ‘He spit on the floor’ is grammatically sound. Such slips would annoy anyone with decent literacy skills. How this got through the editorial process I do not know.
Just when you thought it could get no more annoying, Cussler the author makes a cameo in the novel, apparently this is a running joke of his. At one point a ‘distinguished’ silver fox helps out the protagonists by allowing them to stay in his home. When they look at the name plate they see, oh hilarious irony, Casa de Cussler. I might have forgiven him this act of nauseating narcissism, if the story into which he wanders uninvited was at all compelling.
This novel wants to entertain, not edify. It’s the sort of book you would buy at the airport for a holiday or use to escape from the weekly essay grind. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that but Spartan Gold is unsuccessful at delivering on this key aim. Instead, its cliches and dialogue stew in a dull plot told with the narrative flair one might find in an eleven year old’s English homework.
