Dead Man's Chest

I took Dead Man's Chest with me on vacation. Essentially, my planned vacation activities were put on hold until I completed reading the book. Roger Johnson related the characters' thoughts, actions, and words so clearly, and the story locations so realistically, that I truly suspect that he might really have found historical documentation of actual events. I hope Mr. Johnson will continue writing and publishing novels of this high caliber.

I just finished reading DEAD MAN'S CHEST, and I can honestly say it is one of the best two or three books I have ever read. It is the remarkable story of how one man, Long John Silver, was able to manipulate both pirates and patriots in order to aquire the Treasure of Dead Man's Chest; the other two-thirds of the treasure John Flint burried on Treasure Island. The action takes place between November 1773 and June 1775, the same twenty months in which the naval hero John Paul Jones disappeared from the history books. He was a foreigner and had a warrant on his head, yet he did something so remarkable for the American Colonies that he was awarded one of the first naval commissions in the Continental Navy. DEAD MAN'S CHEST reveals for the first time exactly what he did, woven together with other historical events and with just enough fiction to give this amazing novel a hook to keep my undivided interest. I give DEAD MAN'S CHEST five stars!

I just finished reading Dead Man's Chest by Commander Roger Johnson and was thrilled with each page. I'm not much of a fiction reader, but once I read the two page preface, I was hooked. Commander Johnson has put together a marvelous story of adventure, mixed with love, intrigue, and how Long John Silver manipulated hundreds of pirates and Colonial patriots into doing his bidding to find and take back the treasure of Dead Man's Chest. I was especially taken with the 1777 transcript of the Royal Navy Admiralty Court of Inquiry that formed the foundation of this amazing epic adventure. I recommend Dead Man's Chest to everyone who likes a great yarn, and truly hope this important literary work makes it to the big screen.

I've wondered what might have happened when Long John Silver and Ben Gunn pulled away from Dead Man's Chest in their small boat finally escaping death. Now I know because Roger Johnson, in his wonderful telling-the-tale way, moves the reader, through the adventures of John Paul Jones, back to Dead Man's Chest with bone-chilling encounters on land and on sea. And Long John Silver surfaces along with other pirates, providing us with stories within stories finally bringing us to a momentous conclusion. Would that Roger's tale become a movie.

I don't know how he's accomplished it, but Commander Johnson's new novel, Dead Man's Chest, is written with the same rivetting plot and clarity as Patrick O'Brian and C.S, Forrester. By the time I was halfway through his most interesting preface, I was hooked, and couldn't put the book down until all was revealed about Long John Silver's involvement with the American Founding Fathers and the Revolutionary War. An amazing tale of lust for treasure, sabotage, power, and how one man was able to manipulate both patriots and pirates to do his bidding. This is a must read for anyone who loves the sea, anyone who enjoys a plot full of twists and turns, and anyone who just loves a great yarn.