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The Vivero Letter

Desmond Bagley

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Feb 03, 2022 Sam Reaves rated it liked it

Desmond Bagley wrote thrillers in the classic British tradition, from the sixties through the eighties. Books in this tradition feature ordinary men ensnared by chance in criminal mischief or geopolitical intrigue. They are not security or law enforcement professionals, and they have to survive on wits and grit.
Jeremy Wheale is a London accountant, just beginning to grow discontented with his dull life. His brother back in Devon runs the family farm; when he is murdered in an apparent burglary Desmond Bagley wrote thrillers in the classic British tradition, from the sixties through the eighties. Books in this tradition feature ordinary men ensnared by chance in criminal mischief or geopolitical intrigue. They are not security or law enforcement professionals, and they have to survive on wits and grit.
Jeremy Wheale is a London accountant, just beginning to grow discontented with his dull life. His brother back in Devon runs the family farm; when he is murdered in an apparent burglary attempt, Jeremy is shocked out of his humdrum routine. The apparent object of the burglary attempt is a family heirloom, an old brass tray of uncertain origin. When two competing archeologists show up on the heels of the police, both offering to buy the tray, Wheale wants to know what's going on. The tray, it turns out, is one of a pair which together, along with a letter from a Spanish soldier who was held captive by the Mayas for years, hold a clue to the location of a fabulous lost city, jammed with gold, in the Yucatan. One of the archeologists has the other tray and is obsessed with finding the place. His rival is equally determined to beat him to the punch. The upshot is that Wheale imposes a truce on the two and donates his tray to the effort on the condition that he accompany the archeologists on the search.
That's a complicated setup for the main action, which takes Wheale, the two archeologists and the comely wife of the younger one into the jungle in Quintana Roo, in search of the lost city. They're not the only ones on the hunt; an American gangster has gotten wind of the story and brings his own team to the event. The impenetrable jungle teems with snakes and ruthless escaped convicts. The younger archeologist is insanely jealous and slowly going mad. In short, it's no picnic. There is a violent denouement.
It's a good adventure yarn, well-written and surprisingly full of interesting facts; while the lost city is fictional, there's a lot of background about Mayan history and the unusual geography of the Yucatan that had me rushing to Wikipedia to find out more. Did you know that the last Maya resistance to Spanish/Mexican rule was not stamped out until 1901? Neither did I. Good novels inform as well as entertain, and Desmond Bagley wrote a number of them. ...more

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Shelves: thriller-adventure

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