History hunter chronicles fab finds

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/05/2021 (1913 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nathan Raab has a seriously cool job. He’s the president of the Raab Collection, which specializes in tracking down, authenticating, and selling rare historical documents and artifacts.

Like what, you ask? Like the letter in which Theodore Roosevelt used the phrase “speak softly and carry a big stick” for the first time; or a piece of the first underground wire that brought electricity into a house; or the supposedly lost tapes recorded on board Air Force One after John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas.

Co-written with Luke Barr, The Hunt for History: On the Trail of the World’s Lost Treasures — from the Letters of Lincoln, Churchill, and Einstein to the Secret Recordings Onboard JFK’s Air Force One (Scribner, 272 pages, $26), is a spellbinding account of Raab’s journey from new guy in the family business to an expert in document authentication — a journey that brought him into contact with some of the world’s most important pieces of history and with an interesting assortment of characters. Neither dry nor dull, the book is jam-packed with fascinating stories.

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OK, this gets a bit tricky. Lee Child, the creator of the ex-military cop Jack Reacher, is actually the pseudonym of James Grant. His brother, Andrew Grant, is also an established novelist.

James wants to retire from writing the novels (he’s been doing them since 1997), so Andrew will take over the series. But they’ve written The Sentinel (Random House, 464 pages, $13) together, as Lee Child and Andrew Child. The big question, of course: does the book feel different, with the hands of another writer upon it? The answer: no, not really. The writing is perhaps a smidgen less terse.

But the story? Pure Reacher. A guy is caught up in a crisis not of his own making, and Reacher steps in to help him out. Fisticuffs and mayhem ensue. If you’re a fan of Reacher and you’ve been wondering whether Lee Child’s retirement spelled the end of Jack’s adventures, you can relax. This is a top-flight Reacher story; may they continue for decades more to come.

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Deadlock (Gallery Books, 480 pages, $23), by Catherine Coulter, is the 24th in the FBI Thriller series, and it’s a real corker.

Someone is sending boxes filled with puzzle pieces to FBI Special Agent Dillon Savich. One of Savich’s fellow agents thinks the puzzle is pointing Savich to a real place in Maryland. But she soon learns this is no ordinary small town, and Savich soon learns things left buried in the past have a way of coming back to life.

Series fans will enjoy the interplay between the characters — especially between Savich and his partner, Lacey Sherlock, who are husband and wife — and, as usual, the book gets darker and more compelling as we get deeper into it. The series has been running since 1996’s The Cove, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

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Speaking of dark and compelling, here’s Aliens: Infiltrator (Titan Books, 352 pages, $22), by Bram Stoker Award-winning novelist Weston Ochse.

If you’re thinking “oh, come on, not one of those quickie movie tie-ins,” you could not be more wrong. Titan Books has done a whole series of these books, and they’re written by talented, established writers. This one, commissioned to be the prequel to the new Aliens: Fireteam video game, is absolutely terrifying.

Set on a remote planet, where the crew of Pala Station is conducting dangerous experiments on alien life forms, the novel is suspenseful and gory, with a cast of characters (including a handful of former Colonial Marines) that fits nicely into the vast Alien/Aliens universe, as if they have always been there. Many of the story’s ingredients are familiar — you can’t set a story in this universe without talking about face-huggers and chest-bursters and acid for blood — but Ochse adds in a lot of new ingredients, and monsters we’ve never seen before. Good, icky fun.

Halifax freelancer David Pitt’s column appears the first weekend of every month. You can follow him on Twitter at @bookfella.