Drakes Bay by T.A. Roberts Review

               Product Description

On a quiet Sunday morning in San Francisco, scholar Ethan Storey and his girlfriend are touring an open house in the hills. It is an archive of rare books and Ethan comes to believe that the rarest of the rare may be here: the logbooks of the 1577 - 1580 world voyage of Sir Francis Drake. These have been
lost to history suppressed by Queen Elizabeth, who thought they contained the state secrets of the Northwest Passage. Where had Drake sailed? A brass plate purportedly left behind by Drake near San Francisco Bay and found in the 1930s had been accepted as genuine, then exposed as fraud, re-validated and exposed again. It was always suspected that the actual records of the voyage might still exist, and if found would make the plate, validated, a treasure for its owner. But if the powerful California family that held the plate of brass was desperate for cash, yet would rather destroy the logbooks than see them made public, something else must be going on. The logbooks are the nexus of a contemporary story of greed as violent and conspiratorial as anything in the sixteenth century. As Ethan, a university professor in midlife with doubts about his much younger lover, searches for the logs, he also discovers much more about her, his emotionally detached father, and the power of historical events to shape our lives.


About the Author
T.A. ROBERTS is the author of two Edgar Award mystery finalists: The Heart of the Dog and Beyond Saru. He is a weekend wooden boat mariner and his profession as a wildlife biologist is the source of two collections of natural history essays. He and his lifelong shipmate Mary live in San Francisco.

My Thoughts:
At the heart of this story are the supposed logbooks of Sir Frances Drake, explorer in the time of Elizabeth I. There are also two waring families who both want the logbooks and will do whatever it takes to get those books. Put an almost 60 year old scholar and his pre-law girlfriend into the mix and it makes for a very good suspenseful and entertaining story.They both live on a boat and both get involved on opposite sides. His father was a historian and there is a possibility that before his death, he supposedly had and hid these logbooks that everyone is looking for. I will not go into any more detail as that would give away the story. I enjoyed the book and there was enough action to keep me interested with some tense moments on the ocean near San Francisco. If you like a good mystery and like history, this book is for you.