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The Providence Rider (2012)

by Robert McCammon(Favorite Author)

4.46 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1596064668 (ISBN13: 9781596064669)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Subterranean Press

series

Matthew Corbett

review 1: This is the 4th installment of the Matthew Corbett series and possibly my favorite. We finally get to meet Professor Fell and get to learn a little about his background and why he took the "evil" path. The author, McCammon, is so brilliant that he has you briefly emphasize with the Emperor of Doom.Spoiler(ish)My only complaint, if I can even call it that, is there isn't a conclusion to the Professor Fell saga. You're still left with questions at the end, and excited to see what happens next.
review 2: THE PROVIDENCE RIDER is the fourth and at this point the most recent of Robert R. McCammon's series featuring young Matthew Corbett as a "problem solver" cum private detective for the Herrald Agency, based in London and New York. I take issue with the publisher's... more blurb that calls this a "standalone installment", since there are constant references to people, places and events that took place in previous novels, most specifically the immediately preceding MISTER SLAUGHTER. Having just read all four books sequentially, I am confident that the reader who jumps in right here will miss a lot of the backstory, as Matthew has changed greatly over the course of the four novels.While I still enjoyed THE PROVIDENCE RIDER, I did not like it as much as the others, and I think the first one, SPEAKS THE NIGHTBIRD, was far and away the best of the bunch. This time around Matthew is shanghaied, along with Berry and Zed and taken to the Bermudas at the command of the mysterious and powerful arch criminal Dr. Evil, err I mean Professor Fells, introduced early in the series. It seems that Professor Fells has a use for Matthew in ferreting out some disloyal members of his little troupe of thieves, cutthroats, murderers and villains, all of whom are gathered at Fell's island castle for a yearly meeting.By this time, McCammon seems to have completely given up on using any sort of historically accurate dialogue or colloquial expressions, as he did in the first novel. The dinner table conversations and liberal use of f-bombs and other expletives sounds as currently anachronistic as could be, and that was half the reason for my lowered ranking of this novel, despite the fact that I enjoyed it. The second reason is that Matthew has become more like James Bond than Sherlock Holmes, and his death-defying feats of bravery, physical strength and resilience and Navy SEAL-like derring-do are a far cry from the bookish 20 year old we first met in SPEAKS THE NIGHTBIRD. I do hope that the "old" Matthew returns. I liked him and the historical fiction better back then.But McCammon still writes interesting characters and plots, and this one is certainly worth a read if you have read the other Mattthew Corbett novels. I just wouldn't recommend starting here.J.M. Tepper less

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