The Medici Dagger

I loved this book. It held my interest throughout the book. I love it so much that I recommend it to friends and even buy it as a gift. It is similar to Dan Brown's religious books like Angels and Demons, etc. Great story!

Like Indiana Jones in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, hero Reb Barnett effortlessly moves through this action-packed adventure with wit, sarcasm, skill and luck. The Medici Dagger is a fast, light, yet predictable read.Five Hundred years ago Leonardo da Vinci crafted an indestructible and super-light alloy and used it to create the Medici Dagger. According to legend, bad guys with such a weapon could do unspeakable things. However, the only way to actually find the dagger is to read Leonardo's long-lost journals and solve the encrypted message within the Circle of Truth. It is up to our hero Reb, who's day job is a daredevil Hollywood stuntman, to find journals in order to locate the Dagger and thus keep it away from the baddies and save the world from destruction. Reb is the perfect guy for the job. His father was a Leonardo scholar and also the curator of the National Gallery of Art, so Reb has been well schooled in the Great Man from an early age. But, tragically, Reb's parents both died in a mysterious house fire leaving the soon-to-be-orphaned boy to jump from the family home in a foreshadowing of his stunt-man career.This is Cameron West's first fiction. He's the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple. West has quite a skilled literary agent - The Medici Dagger has been sold to Paramount for a movie slated to star Tom Cruise.If a fast-paced mixture of stunts, comedy, hunts for 500-year-old artifacts, international locales, unbelievable set-ups and bad guys with black hats to make certain you know who they are appeals to you, The Medici Dagger may be just the thing for a few hours of adventurous escape.David Meerman Scott

In 1491, Leonardo da Vinci invents a new alloy. He shapes it into a blade and places it inside a vise. He slams a mallet on the tip only to see the hammer split apart while the dagger remains whole. Knowing how his benefactors think, Leonardo believes that his creation would be used as a weapon of destruction. He hides his findings with the hope that the future will beget a world filled with peace that can use his alloy for the common good.Five centuries later internationally recognized da Vinci expert Rollo Barnett decodes the Renaissance Man's enigmatic writing about the dagger. However, he and his wife die in a suspicious-looking fire. Two decades later, Rollo's son Reb learns that a billionaire arms dealer murdered his parents. He obsessively needs to complete his father's work on da Vinci and revenge himself on the killer though he places himself in danger from his parents' killer.If thriller fans suspend logic for a few hours, they will enjoy an action packed tale. The story line requires the reader to accept a lot even from the start. For instance, da Vinci hides his new discovery for fear of weapon-use yet shapes it into a dagger. The arms dealer wants to make outer space smart bombs (don't ask how), but kills the prime source of locating the alloy. This consistent inconsistency is bothersome for those fans that need to believe in an "authentic" feel to the events. However, Cameron West's debut novel provides entertainment for those readers who want a simple but wild ride.Harriet Klausner

Medici Dagger, like the iain pears jonathan and flavia books, is a modern suspense novel about a historical mystery. The main character, Reb, is a stuntman, making his ability to survive in the face of evil pursuers easier to swallow. The historical puzzle is extremely well done. On the down side, i wish the book had been a little bit "denser." The book moves at the speed of a TV show rather than what i expect of a book, and it is clear that the author, whose writing is very good, could produce a less sketchy effort. I hope he does, it would be a treat. A couple of minor complaints: the heroine, though smart, is utterly helpless -- too much so even to pick up a gun that is lying on the floor in order to save herself and the hero. Only a total dingbat would be as unfailingly unable to help herself. Mr. West! pay attention and fix this next time. Also, anyone reading the book cannot but marvel at the fact that people are carrying around genuine, 500-year-old manuscript pages that are brittle, fragile, and very valuable when there ia a kinko's on every corner. Readers with an interest in art, surely a big part of the audience for this book, will cringe constantly at the thought of what is happening to these papers. Maybe the idea of copies is tough on the plot, but pretending that xerox machines do not exist doesn't solve it. But this is a small point; overall i would highly recommend this book.