The Emerald Storm

March 12, 2012
Dietrich’s entertaining fifth Napoleonic-era thriller starring Ethan Gage (after 2010’s The Barbary Pirates) finds our reluctant hero dreaming of retirement, but the kidnapping of his nearly three-year-old son, Harry, starts Ethan and his wife, Astiza, on a path leading from an Alpine prison to Saint-Domingue, “the tormented western half of the island of Hispaniola that the natives call Haiti.” Pressed variously into service on behalf of France, England, and America, Gage switches sides the way a chameleon changes hues. With ingenuity born of desperation, he uses or adapts inventions such as the glider and diving bell while forced to seek the lost treasure of Montezuma, which may contain the secret of flight. Dietrich seamlessly blends historical figures such as Napoleon and Toussaint L’Ouverture, the liberator of Haiti, with fictional characters like Gage’s nemesis, “renegade secret policeman” Leon Martel, in this amusing swashbuckler. Agent: Andrew Stuart, the Stuart Agency.