White Gold by Rachel Amphlett

Publisher's Synopsis

A haunted man. A murdered friend. A deadly enemy.

Dan Taylor's career as a bomb disposal expert in the British Army ended when an IED killed three of his team and left him scarred for life. Years later, and on the brink of self-destruction, Dan struggles to cope with the nightmares that haunt him.

Until the day an estranged friend leaves a voicemail message, moments before he is assassinated in cold blood.

Plunged into a global conspiracy, Dan must unravel the research notes Peter Edgewater left behind and locate an explosive device being smuggled towards London by a secretive organisation hell-bent on protecting its assets - and time is running out.

White Gold is the first book in an action-packed adventure thriller series that fans of Vince Flynn, Robert Ludlum and the Lee Child Jack Reacher series are calling "a blast!

My Review of White Gold by Rachel Amphlett

White Gold introduces us to Dan Taylor, a geologist who is an ex-bomb disposal expert with the British army who once served in Iraq. After one particular job went disastrously wrong he was left with a couple of dead buddies, recurring nightmares and a drinking problem.

An old friend leaves a few voicemail messages on Dan’s machine that suggest he’s in fear for his life. Peter Edgewater has been completing a speaking tour of Europe to present his findings on an exciting new energy source known as white gold. Its existence has huge implications on how the world’s energy market will change in the future.

The prospect of a new, clean and powerful energy source is the last thing that powerful coal and gas companies want to see and they’ll do whatever they can to stop it from potentially taking over their stranglehold on world markets.

Peter senses that his life is in grave danger, so to protect his years of work He sends all of his notes and other important documents to Dan for safe keeping. When the inevitable happens Dan pays Peter’s ex-wife Sarah a visit to talk to her about the calls he received. It quickly becomes clear that someone wants to keep them quiet and, also, wants the documents they hold. Going through the notes they quickly realise the enormity of what he was working on and the impact White Gold will have on the world.

The notes point them in the direction of Australia and this sparks the action-packed charge around the world as they try to protect this brand new energy source.

I appreciated the pace of the action as we careened from country to country and close encounter with death to clever getaway. However, it was the lack of continuity provided in the narrative, the lack of clarity over what exactly each “discovery” meant and the shockingly high level of coincidence that dominated the plot that I found very difficult to come to terms with.

I’m as prepared to suspend my disbelief for the sake of a good story as the next person, but for all of the key players in this save-the-world scenario to have come from the same small squad of Iraq veterans was simply pushing things a little too far.

Overall, I found this to be a very quick read thanks to the furious action sequences. There’s clearly some development required of the Dan Taylor character and this will happen in the subsequent books in the series but you can already see the potential that’s there.