Rick Boyer
PIRATE TRADE: A DOC ADAMS MYSTERY New York. Ivy Books. 1995 Paper. 267 pages. reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 07/22/2010 recommend to readers? Yes, probably. * * * * review: Perhaps 90% of what I know of ivory and its products I learned recently through reading Rick Boyer's PIRATE TRADE. That is the eighth of nine DOC ADAMS detective mystery novels. Doc Adams has just bought wife Mary a modern day copy of Nineteenth Century Nantucket lightship baskets (now ladies' purses). Its expensive cover has a beautiful piece of carved ivory on it. When Doc gives the latter-day lightship purse to Mary, she fears that the ivory is illegal, pirated. Mary is into ecology these days and an active member of Cape Watch, run by friends of the Adams family, fishing tour guides whose livelihood is seriously threatened around Cape Cod by depletion of various species of salt water fish. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officer persuades Mary to join another investigator (old friend of Doc, much too handsome for Doc's taste) going underground with Cape Cod merchants trying to find suspected ivory smugglers. Might they have been tempted into smuggling? In the novel we learn about the three species of ivory and the creatures that deliver them: African elephants, walruses and narwhals. East African elephant ivory is remarkably pliant. Nineteenth Century English gentlemen used riding crops made of such ivory. But elephant ivory's major commerical use was for billiard balls. With luck one elephant's tusk can (or used to, before prohibited) yield five billiard balls. Ivory has always been valued and scarce. Today there is big money to be made in smuggling it into the USA. And Mary and Doc had better tread lightly when up against the smugglers. PIRATE TRADE is indeed didactic -- it wouldn't be a Rick Boyer novel if it weren't. But there is ample mystery, intrigue, derring-do and murder to satisfy any reader of Rick Boyer. This Edgar Award winner know how to spin a yarn and draw us into its web. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/review.php?isbn=0804106126 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 07/19/2010 name of review: Why might Massachusetts environmentalists be tempted to trade in illegal ivory? rating: * * * (Might recommend) review: The cover of my 1995 Ivy Books paperback edition of Rick Boyer's DOC ADAMS mystery, PIRATE TRADE, is unforgettable. It features a carved ivory miniature of an Eskimo or Aleut in a kayak. In his right hand, a two bladed paddle rests on the boat. His left hand seems poised to hurl a harpoon. The harpoon's razor sharp point and part of the shaft is bright red. The story illustrated is less memorable, because unfocused. It rambles too far afield, for my taste. The novel begins one day in August. Series hero Dr Charles Adams, dental surgeon of Concord, Massachusetts, had sailed alone in his small boat to Nantucket Island. In McQuaid's gift shop Doc bought a "lightship purse" for wife Mary. This was a handcrafted basket once woven from reeds by 19th Century ships crews serving many boring months at a time on floating, moored lighthouses. Famously, in the center of each basket's lid: a carved ivory oval as decoration. Doc Adams forked over as a surprise gift for Mary $1,895 for a recently produced lightship purse. And the scene is set for PIRATE TRADE. Wife Mary, increasingly into ecology, especially via a year-old membership in a group called Cape Watch, is suspicious that the lighthouse purse's ivory is illegal. U. S. Department of Fish and Wildlife investigator Brad Taylor shares Mary's doubts. He also is happy to find in Mary a willing volunteer to do some underground investigating of suspected ivory smugglers around Cape Cod Bay. You can read this book for its valuable information on ivory: elephant, walrus and narwhal. That information is ample and, to me, at least fascinating. You can moreover learn about U. S. efforts to protect the creatures that yield the ivory. And also the onetime uses of the three forms of ivory: e.g., as billiard balls and riding crops (ivory is very flexible!). You can also learn a fair amount about reasons behind the commercial extinction of fish off Massachusetts and off the Grand Banks of Canada. You can read this book for its thrills. There were not many for me. There is a final confrontation with bad guys way up north in the wilds of Maine. But it did not do much for me. You can read PIRATE TRADE as a detective puzzle to be unraveled. Questions that arise include: --
Who was strong enough to drive a replica of Doc's ivory
Eskimo/canoe/harpoon into a shopkeeper's chest?
-- Is the covert operative that Mary works with on the up and up or in league with ivory smugglers? -- Could the growing loss of fishing grounds drive hitherto honest commercial fishermen and even environmentalists to smuggle ivory? -- Are the smugglers out to kill Doc or merely to scare him off? E. g., when someone sticks an ivory replica of the canoe scene described above on Adams's front door? How should Doc react? More than any other Doc Adams thriller, PIRATE TRADE puts Doc's marriage at risk. Mary's undercover partner is the sexiest man alive, albeit an old friend of Doc. Mary, for her part, suspects Doc, not without plausible cause, of hanky panky of his own -- with his luscious office assistant. She, Susan Petri, makes a move on Doc once Mary has gone off sleuthing. Doc has reason to fear that Mary has left him forever. And he feels lost. When Mary disappears in the line of duty, how will Doc react? Let her go? Search for her? If you have nothing better to do than probe the love life of Doctor Charles Adams, then read the book and find out. Rating: 3.4 stars, rounded down to 3.0. http://www.lunch.com/cafelibri/reviews/UserReview-rick_boyer_pirate_trade -74-1500699-67083-Why_might_Massachusetts_environmentalists _be.html?gat=review =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com title of review: "Then the fog lifted; it all made sense." rating: * * * * review: "Then
the fog lifted; it all made sense. Fit together like the floating
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that come together in your head" (Ch.
20)
Those are the words of the narrator of PIRATE TRADE by Rick Boyer (1995). Like all nine DOC ADAMS detective thrillers, this novel is narrated by series hero Charles Hatton Adams, M.D., D. D. S, aka "Doc" to everybody but his wife Mary (to her he is Charlie). Doc Adams is an oral surgeon who lives and practices in Concord, Massachusetts. The Adamses also have a summer cottage, The Breakers, on the west side of Cape Cod and are likely to drive to and from it year round. They also have a small motorized sailing ketch kept in a nearby harbor. Doc Adams is easily bored. He runs 50+ miles/week, usually skips lunch, is a gourmet cook, works out in a Boston gym with an ex-Special Forces martial arts master named Laitas Roantis. Not even a beautiful wife and two intelligent young adult sons can keep 50-something Doc from being bored. Fortunately, Doc has a way of blundering into other people's attraction to killers, maimers, kidnappers, smugglers, headhunters, poison dart blowers. When that happens, Doc sheds his surgeon's gown, figuratively, and becomes a dangerous and endangered mixture of Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones. in PIRATE TRADE Mary Adams has been active for a year now in CAPE WATCH, an environmental, save-the-fishes voluntary association run by a married couple. The husband, ultra-handsome Larry Carpenter's career had been guiding fisherman out into the deep to find their trophies But now times are hard and the temptation is to do something to offset fishing losses. Why not use fishing boats to smuggle into the Boston area prohibited ivory: elephant, walrus and narwhal? Maybe the Carpenters aren't into ivory smuggling. But Mary Adams incautiously hinted to them that she had been recruited by the U. S. Government to do some discreet snooping around Cape Cod as to who is bringing in the ivory. Suddenly, Mary disappears. Kidnapped? The marriage of Doc and Mary had been going through a rough patch and Mary had recently caught Doc in an incriminating scene with his operating room assistant Susan Petri. Even before the possible kidnapping, Mary had stormed out and Doc feared she was gone for good. Nonetheless, love conquers all. Doc Adams deals himself actively into the search for his missing wife. In the process he heads toward a showdown in a remote Maine cabin with more bad guys than you can count: men with at least two murders to their credit, one with a carved ivory eskimo in a kayak -- shoved straight into the victim's chest. Doc had been floundering around. Nothing made sense. Suddenly, in the words quoted at the beginning of this review: "Then
the fog lifted; it all made sense. Fit together like the floating
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that come together in your head" (Ch. 20).
When it comes to unraveling convoluted mysteries, Doc's mind is slow and bumbling like those of many of his readers. Something always clicks in a DOC ADAMS mystery. And readers can check their hunches against Doc's. -OOO- recommended reading: Rick Boyer: THE MAN WHO WHISPERED. Herman Melville: MOBY DICK. NANOOK OF THE NORTH. http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/WriteReview. aspx?EAN=9780804106122 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 07/23/2010 title of review: "When you mix with the wrong people, you do things you wouldn't usually do" . rating: * * * review: Edgar Award winner Rick Boyer's 1995 DOC ADAMS detective thriller PIRATE TRADE is notably convoluted. My guess is that it is a warmup for his 2005 effort in BUCK GENTRY to write "the great American novel." There are many ways to read PIRATE TRADE: as a didactic treatment of illegal trade in the ivory tusks of elephants, walruses and narwhals; as a crisis in a jealousy-filled marriage; as pretty scenes of Massachusetts and Maine landscapes -- and on and on. Here
is what I suggest that you focus on:
As readers of the series know, DOC ADAMS is a 50-something oral surgeon who lives and practices in historic Concord, Massachusetts. He is easily bored. Doc's sexy wife Mary and he have two grown unmarried sons. Mary's kid brother Joe Brindelli is a state policeman. Doc has two "angels." The good angel is Dr Moe Abramson, psychiatrist. The dark angel is Lithuanian soldier of fortune Laitis Roantis, Doc's martial arts instructor, ex-Foreign Legionnaire and ex-Special Forces operative. All these persons play roles in PIRATE TRADE. I suggest that you can read this novel as a study in what happens when a good man is led into more temptation than he can handle. That good man is Bill Bedford. Bill and wife Sally had prospered running sports fishing tours off Cape Cod. Came the 1980s economic recession, however, and Bill grew desperate. To avoid selling his big-game fishing boats Bill Bedford, without telling Sally, began smuggling illegal ivory into Massachusetts. For cover he talked unsuspecting Sally into forming CapeWatch, a private group to protect endangered species that used local waters. A year earlier Mary had joined Capewatch, become a passionate environmentalist and also a close friend of Sally. At story's beginning, Doc has sailed alone to Nantucket and bought as a surprise for wife Mary an expensive purse with a carved ivory oval on its boxlike top cover. Neo-environmentalist Mary had suspected that the ivory was illegal and this was confirmed by a U. S. Fish and Wildlife Officer who then recruited Mary for work using her maiden name Mary Brindelli to visit Cape Cod shops, buy ivory and look for clues to illegal trading. In a marital spat, Mary walked out on Doc, who was jealous of her non-boring undercover police work and whom she had caught in an apparent love tryst. She contacts neither Doc nor sons as to her whereabouts. Doc then makes a special visit to the town of Hyannis and Bill Bedford's marina and charter service. He had hoped that Mary would have told her friend Sally Bedford where she had fled. No luck. But a careless hint by Doc to 6' 4", 270 pound Bill that Mary may be investigating the ivory trade causes Bill to press Doc with questions. Only days later does this strike Doc as suspicious -- after Mary has briefly reappeared, then disappeared, now feared kidnapped by ivory smugglers. A photograph of a crime scene helps Doc put two and two together: what was Bill's damaged van doing there? Finally, Doc puts it all together in his imagination. At the same time psychiatrist friend Moe Abramson sends the Dark Angel Laitis Roantis to help Doc find Mary. Taking an increasingly jealous and angry Sally Bedford along with them, they fly north into Maine and stake out a little used cottage of the Bedords. One by one they lure and disarm Mary's captors. These include a young woman who is married man Bill's girlfriend. At story's end irate wife Sally confronts husband Bill. Earlier the tough Lithuanian soldier of fortune, Laitis Roantis had tried to explain to an unbelieving Sally how circumstances can lead good people like Bill astray: "Sometimes, Sally,
when you mix with the wrong people, you do things you wouldn't usually
do" (Ch. 33).
This novel, by the way, is a murder mystery, as well as everything else. One merchant is stabbed to death with an ivory carving of an eskimo in a kayak, hunting walrus with a harpoon. Because, playing undercover investigator himself, he had bought an identical carving the same day, Doc becomes the principal murder suspect. This mystery thriller is so complex and some of its clues so obscurely hidden that it can at times make a reader's mind spin. Let me suggest a second time: Rick Boyer was warming up for even more complexity in his coming BUCK GENTRY. He is packing way more than needed into a simple thriller. Still, the writing remains high-test and Doc's self-putting-down humor ever lively. -OOO- tags: rick boyer, doc adams, elephant ivory, walrus ivory, narwhal ivory, illegal trade in ivory http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Trade-Doc-Adams-Mysteries/ product-reviews/0804106126/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie= UTF8&showViewpoints=1&qid=1279890951&sr=8-1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com Review Title: "important about ivory: ... people kill for this stuff" by aohcapablanca, Jul 24 '10 Nine DOC ADAMS detective mystery thrillers were written by my new, ailing neighbor Rick Boyer between 1982 and 1998. I have recently read the nine and in days will have reviewed them all. PIRATE TRADE (1995) is eighth in order of writing. WARNING: THE REST OF THIS REVIEW CONTAINS A MAJOR SPOILER. I apologize in advance. In my opinion, it has to be so. Enter
the novel's villain.
I found PIRATE TRADE very hard going at times, mainly because I could never figure out whither it was leading, clue-wise. On re-reading I found that author Rick Boyer inexplicably did less than justice to readers (or at least to this reader) in identifying that novel's needlessly obscured villain. Granted: the villain who intruded into the life of Doc Adams via his loving wife Mary was alluded to in Chapters 1, 2 and 3. But only after 17 more chapters of murder, mayhem, tension in Doc's marriage and a slew of red herrings and clues is there the slightest further attention to the villain, who is also Doc's and Mary's good, trusted friend. In that later chapter a sheepish Doc has driven to Hyannis to see if his angry wife Mary, perhaps estranged forever, might have told her friends and mentors in things ecological -- the villain and his wife -- where she was hiding out. The couple runs a marina and game-fishing charter service. A jealous Mary had walked out on an equally jealous Doc and had since contacted neither her husband nor their two sons. Now Doc hopes against hope for news of Mary from their mutual "friends" in Hyannis. Alas, the couple had not seen Mary in some time. The game fisherman, whose business is no longer as good as when started two decades earlier, impressed Adams mainly for being steamed over a large scratch, along with a bunged up bumper, on the company's three-month old white van, possibly made only minutes earlier by a departing drunken fishing customer. In retrospect, though, Doc would a few days later suddenly realize that too many probing questions about what Mary might be up to had been asked of him by the not yet detected villain. And Doc had at the Hyannis marina unwittingly but trustingly tipped his friend to the possibility that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service might have sent Mary undercover to look around Cape Cod for illegal traders in ivory. The "aha moment" clue finally appears as late as Chapter 32 (of 40). Doc's good angel, psychiatrist Moe Abramson, has sent Adams's dark angel, soldier-of-fortune Laitis Roantis, to that well-known oral surgeon to help find the missing Mary. A chance glance by Doc at some photos taken in the parking lot of a murder scene in Gloucester reveals his Hyannis friend's battered white business van in a town where it had no business to be. Doc immediately shares with Laitis his sudden suspicion verging on certainty that the Hyannis environmentalist and fisherman may have disposed of his erstwhile friend and disciple in things ecological, Mary, to protect the villain's involvement in ivory smuggling -- something never till this moment suspected by Doc. Meanwhile Mary and her handsome undercover partner in covert investigation of ivory smugglers (an old, old friend of Doc Adams of whose sex appeal our good oral surgeon is notably jealous) have indeed been kidnapped by persons unknown. And, before he was kicked to death by Laitis, a murderous thug who had cornered both Doc and Doc's martial arts trainer, told them that Mary was alive and being held "up north." After tips from the villain's unsuspecting but jealous wife, the kidnapping hideout turns out to be a cabin belonging to the villain a six hours drive north in the deep woods of Maine. In and around that cabin PIRATE TRADE comes to its bloody ending. By harping on how needlessly buried is the villain of PIRATE TRADE, have I "spoiled" this novel for fair-minded readers? I hope not. But, had I not, you might not have made sense of the complicated whole without this unifying thread. And simply stopped reading and closed the covers of an informative novel about ivory smuggling. For the novel is very complex. And the normal detective thriller you were probably looking forward to relaxing with is not meant to be this convoluted. Additional
Complexities of PIRATE TRADE
-- First there is the illegal trade in ivory: the tusks of narwhals, walruses and elephants. Brilliantly if didactically presented. After several pages of the history, provenance and economic importance through the ages of the three sources of ivory, a world-traveling local authority on ivory underscores to our series hero the following bottom line: "'Then,
Dr. Adams, I must now tell you the single most important thing about
ivory you could ever know.'
'You mean you left something out?' 'The most important thing. People kill for this stuff. They have already killed for it recently and ... they could kill you. Be careful, my friend, and I hope to see you again'" (Ch. 13). -- Second, throughout PIRATE TRADE there is murder and mayhem, especially one in which a suspected illegal ivory retailer on Cape Cod is stabbed to death. The murder weapon: a carved foot-long walrus tusk portraying an Eskimo in a kayak, blooded harpoon raised in one hand. This is the book cover's haunting illustration. -- Third, Doc's and Mary's marriage is going through a rough patch. It doesn't help that Mary catches Doc and his operating room assistant having a compromising meal (not of Doc's choosing) together at the family weekend cottage on Cape Cod. This causes Mary to storm out and disappear for several days. What
is wrong with this novel?
My guess is that by this stage in the DOC ADAMS cycle, author Rick Boyer was feeling increasingly hemmed in by the traditional confines of a literary genre -- the detective mystery thriller -- that is supposed to be more entertaining than profound, more filled with action than with character analysis. Doc Adams the man was running out of energy. Would
I recommend PIRATE TRADE to friends?
To some, yes, to most, no. Graphic artists should look closely at the strikingly good cover illustration as an introduction to the plot. Environmentalists and persons in love with ivory should seek out the informative ivory trade passages. Lovers of good standard, relaxing, honestly clued detective thrillers should run for the hills. -OOO- Pros: Illegal trade in ivories: whale, narwhal and elephant. Stunningly apt book cover illustration. Marital jealousies. Cons: Too complex a content for a detective thriller. Clues buried too obscurely. Surfaces, not depths. The Bottom Line: Most of what I know about ivory I learned from PIRATE TRADE. Memorable cover illustration: carved walrus ivory as murder weapon. This detective thriller frames too much freight. http://www.epinions.com/review/Rick_Boyer_Pirate_Trade _epi/content_518996070020 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/boyer_pirate.html |