SPARTAN GOLD                                                                                    by Clive Cussler with Grant Blackwood

Review #37

Main Characters: Sam and Remi Fargo, Treasure Hunters

While exploring the Great Pocomoke Swamp in Delaware, in search of hidden treasure, Sam Fargo and his wife, Remi, stumble across a World War II-era German mini-submarine. But how did it get there? Could the bottle of wine they find inside the sub really be part of a set of bottles, (a collection known as Napoleon's Lost Cellar) on which the emperor Napoleon fashioned a map showing the location of a pair of solid gold pillars, originally hidden in the Pennine Alps 2,500 years ago?

The Treasure Hunt leads the Fargos to other lost bottles hidden across Europe and eventually points the way to the treasure. The book's villain, Hadeon Bondaruk, who covets the columns and will do anything to get them, sends his henchmen after the Fargos. The clever duo manages to stay one small step ahead of the hired killers until everyone arrives at the inevitable end.

Cussler is an excellent writer but...I did not enjoy this book. I like to try to solve the mystery along with the characters. Since I have very little knowledge of ancient history, especially ancient Greece, Rome, or Europe in general, the convoluted treasure clues confounded me. (That means I seldom understood what was going on! ;) Readers with knowledge of ancient world people and places will like this book.

Dirk Pitt is my Cussler hero and he wasn’t in this one.