Goliath: A Thriller

With Goliath, Corridan and Waid have woven a gripping novel in the style of Michael Crichton and the duo of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. It is a story of man-against-man, of the deceptions we play against one another and the wounds we inflict on one another.

As the owner of Skeleton Salvage, Sonny Wade is a man down on his luck. Sonny’s crew abandons him, quitting en masse. Following on the heels of the crew’s desertion, Sonny’s ships and home are repossessed. A lucky last-minute break comes in the form of an SOS from the Russian supertanker Bennkah.

Sonny manages to stave off repossession and reassembles his crew. Despite the odds, Skeleton Salvage beats their competition to the great ship. What they find is a nightmare. The ship has run aground, and there is the very real prospect of crude oil spilling into the ocean. Even worse, the interior of the massive ship has been ravaged by fire. The dead are found littered throughout the inside, bodies charred beyond recognition, or found floating frozen in the sea. It’s up to Sonny and his crew to secure the ship and unground her. However, a deadly storm looms on the horizon, and there’s more to the Bennkah than meets the eye.

This was an enjoyable, fast-paced read. It engages the attention from the start and doesn’t let go. The authors did a great job of doling out tidbits of Sonny’s life. I spent most of the book really wanting to know what happened in his past. (You don’t find out until close to the end.) My only qualm was with the places where we jump perspective several times in a row, sometimes from paragraph to paragraph.