Published 5th August by Zaffre.
From the cover of the book:
A high-octane, fast-paced novel from a new voice in adventure writing and the winner of a Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. For fans of Clive Cussler.Acclaimed explorer Rob Nash has lost his way. Grieving the death of his wife, and blaming himself, he sees no reason to carry on. But when his 'Uncle' Frank Douglas offers him the chance to lead a cave diving expedition in the jungles of Papua, Nash can see some light at the end of the tunnel.
But the expedition might not be what it seems. With a decades old Japanese submarine buried deep in a cavern, and a team hell-bent on unleashing the treasures it hides, Nash finds himself on a ship heading for danger.
With a lethal band of criminals on board, who will stop at nothing to get the gold, Nash is fighting for his life. Whilst battling his own demons, can he forgive himself for the wrongs of his past - and survive the perils of the deep?
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Australian, Rob Nash is a broken man. Once an acclaimed cave diving explorer, Rob's last great underwater adventure led to the death of his pregnant wife Natalie, and he has been unable to drag himself from a pit of despair ever since. He spends his nights longing for death while flirting with danger, surfing colossal waves, and his days hidden away in the house he used to share with Natalie, avoiding the TV news crews who are desperate to goad him into admitting culpability for her death - even though the inquest deemed the incident an accident.
Then, a twist of fate offers him a chance to try to regain something of his former life when his 'Uncle' Frank Douglas contacts him about an offer from an Indonesian businessman to lead a cave diving expedition in the jungles of Papua. This might be just what he needs - if he can overcome his own demons enough to regain the passion for cave diving that used to drive him.
But things are not as they appear to be. The Indonesian business man backing the expedition is after more than an artfully shot documentary about the Hoosenbeck Gorge. An old WWII Japanese submarine, rumoured to be packed with treasure, lies hidden in a cavern somewhere in the cave system, and our ruthless tycoon is desperate to lay claim to these riches to fund his political ambitions. To achieve his aim, he is willing to send Sura, his own daughter, into enemy territory with a band of unscrupulous mercenaries masquerading as a film crew - unaware that she wants the gold for herself, and is not afraid to double cross darling daddy with a few dastardly plans of her own.
Rob and Douglas start to become suspicious of the motives of their employer, but it is not until they are joined by an unexpected team member in US medic, Dr Mia Carter, on her way to a remote mission hospital - whose medical director is somehow linked to the mystery of the Japanese gold - that the expedition takes a menacing turn. The three are in big trouble and about to get caught in the all too real crossfire between rival parties. Will they survive their adventure, or become collateral damage in the greedy schemes of some very dangerous villains?
What a cracking adventure story! It starts with the slow-burn threads of a broken man with no reason to live, who takes the chance to pull himself from the blackest of of depressions with an offer too good to refuse, and an ambitious young Indonesian woman desperate to escape her suffocating life as the daughter of a controlling father, who sees the chance to use his own greed against him - two very different people looking for a lifeline.
As the mystery of how the treasure came to be hidden in the depths of a jungle cave system unfolds, and Rob and Douglas' fates become tied to the schemes of Sura and her violent crew, the pace of the story ups by notches - especially when Dr Carter becomes involved in the murky goings on and romance blossoms between her and Rob - and the tension increases exponentially until I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat with my heart on my mouth for almost the whole of the final third of the book.
There are so many delicious elements here; an exotic landscape filled with dangers of the animal, human and environmental kinds; a compelling mystery story; the baddest of baddies who you long to see come to a very sticky end; and engaging protagonists who work their way into your heart and add a lovely human interest side to the story. There are more thrilling scenes that you can poke a stick at too, with enough bangs, crashes and explosions to give you everything you need to make the kind of adventure story that pays out in glorious technicolour in your imagination. Think action on the scale of Indiana Jones, with a fascinating cave diving twist!
Incidentally, the cave diving dimension of this tale is brilliant. It is clear that Jake Avila has done his homework here, based on the detailed technical knowledge he divulges about the underwater world of Rob Nash. As someone with an innate fear of the scrapes and claustrophobic spaces he seems to find himself in time and time again, this added a really chilling undertow to the whole piece for me, which was rather entertaining in a weirdly terrifying way.
It's easy to see how this debut has won the accolades of the 2019 Adventure Writer's Competition Clive Cussler Grandmaster Award, and the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for 2020. It's proper grown-up adventure story telling and promises great things from the pen of this new author. There is scope for a sequel here that I would love to read, so I really look forward to seeing what Jake Avila has up his sleeve next!
Cave Diver is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats from your favourite book retailer.
Thank you to Zaffre for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers Tours for inviting meal to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
In 2019, he won the Adventure Writer's Competition Clive Cussler Grandmaster Award for Cave Diver and then went on to win the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for the same book in 2020.
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