Phillip FinchBesprekingen

En un sitio de reunión virtual, uno de sus integrantes llamado Copo de Nieve escribe un mensaje desagradable. Poco después, comienzan a contestarle, algunos de estos en forma de insultos. Aquellos que se atrevieron a enojarlo pagarán las consecuencias. Citados F2F, los integrantes de este sitio comienzan a aparecer asesinados. El principal sospechoso: Copo de Nieve.

It's hard for me to believe this book has an average rating of 4.8 stars on Amazon. Technothriller, where a killer uses executable programs nested in a computer game (like Doom) to track down people who have reacted negatively to the killer's ranting post on an Internet chat board. Too many names/people to follow, with their real names and their handles. The showdown was pretty good, estranged couple, teenage hacker, and the maniac on an island in the San Francisco Bay. Finch was definitely ahead of his time as this was published January 1, 1997.

I enjoyed this international thriller, set in the Phillipines, although it is hard to dispute the criticism that the book is formulaic. A young Philippine girl is offered a job overseas and disappears immediately upon her arrival in Manila. Her distraught mother contacts a friend's son, who is part of a retired black ops team, who come to determine what has happened. A very sinister and horrifying criminal enterprise is operating, forcing the retirees back into the game, while struggling with the issues of justice, morality and karma.

EXCELLENT, scary mystery about cyberspace. DO NOT read this if you are online and have tendencies toward paranoia.

Found this book a compelling read. The magnitude of the adventure was engaging - even the scientific information about gases and how they operate at depth was neither tedious nor difficult to understand.

There was suspense and tragedy as well as drama and adventure. I would recommend this to those who enjoy some drama with their adventure.

A good overview of the issues, concerns, and personalities of the American Radical Right in the early 1980s. The book could have been longer, but that was its only major fault. Finch let the Radical Right speak in their own words which was quite effective. Most members came across as fiercly independent and/or rebellious and often as (especially Identity people and tax protestors) illogical. They certainly confirmed my suspicions that this sort of person simply can not cooperate to any great extent with others of the same ilk. Conspiracy theories of delightfully convulted and absurd proportions were covered. Finch gave a sense of the real people involved in these movements and how, on one level, they seem so normal and nice. He certainly made a convincing case for not fearing a great surge of this sort of activity, at least during economically normal times. Government counter intelligence activity, specifically the FBI's COINTELPRO, was briefly, but fascinatedly, covered. I particularly liked the interview of Laird Wilcox, expert on radical groups left and right and his personal thoughts of and experiences with each, and Bill DePurgh of the Minutemen, the only seemingly thoughtful, intellectual, reasonable (in the sense of thinking about and trying to justify and reconcile a number of idealogical issues and tactical ploys) member of the Radical Right.

This is a fun little adventure yarn. Finch sets it in the Philippines were a bunch of former special forces guys take on some nefarious Russian bad guys. I don't want to ruin the story by telling you what they're up to, but suffice it to say its dastardly. Story moves at a good clip, if a bit implausible. The characters are interesting and engrossing. A good light read. Who knows may turn out to be a good series for Mr. Finch.

Don Shirley & Dave Shaw were extreme depth divers. Diving into Darkness chronicles the attempt to dive over 200 meters to recover a body in an underwater cave in South Africa.
There is lots of technical info on diving, and the psychological drive to reach greater and greater depths.

An interesting look at the dangerous world of deep cave diving, Finch gives a good layman's account of the sport, the technology, the mentality of those who practice it, and the myriad of dangers. He interweaves this information skillfully with the remarkable tale of David Shaw, a one-time world record holder of the deepest diving descent: 270 m, in a sport where most divers rarely venture past the 30m mark; and South Africa's Bushman's Hole, a deep-diving hotspot where, in attempting to recover the body of Dion Dreyer, another diver killed in an accident ten years prior, Shaw lost his life and his dive buddy nearly did as well. A great read, informative and interesting yet deeply personal in presenting the characters involved.

Joint review of this and [Titanic's Last Secrets] in The Miami Herald: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/arts/books/story/702939.html½

Some suggestions for the relaunched Chappies Bubble Gum to put on their wrappers: did you know, for example, that more men have walked on the moon than have dived below 213 metres?

And did you know that in 2005, 52-year-old South African Nuno Gomes [probably the first person the reach the bottom of Bushman’s Hole] broke the deep diving world record, achieving a depth of 318 metres in the Red Sea?

For non-divers, these Ripley’s Believe it or Not type factoids are fascinating, and the thrilling tale of Dave Shaw and Bushman’s Hole is an old-fashioned adventure story in the mould of Scott of the Arctic.

All the ingredients are there: an exotic locale, a devoutly Christian gentleman-adventurer, extreme danger, a spirit of derring-do, a wonderful team, and a selfless quest to restore a boy to his grieving family.

It should be a story that writes itself, and the mystery is how an experienced writer and journalist got it so wrong: Finch took the active ingredient and diluted it to make a long dreary book instead of short exciting one.

If you happen to be a depth diver, the technical, practical and scientific detail which Phillip Finch – a cave diver himself – harps on will no doubt be both useful and interesting. But for the average reader, even the average diver who seldom exceeds 30 metres in depth, the arguments about and descriptions of specialized techniques and apparatus are not only unnecessary but exceedingly boring.

Finch makes too much of the fact that Dave Finch was a committed Baptist: when this perfect hero is reported as explaining his actions by saying ‘God told me to do it’ he loses a certain amount of sympathy from those who have been black-balled by the god squad.

Affluent and affable, Hong Kong resident and Cathay Pacific pilot Shaw was bitten by the diving bug late in life, and explored many prime deep-diving sites during his flying lay-overs, soon becoming a world-class extreme diver.

His adrenalin – or God – driven quest for ever deeper dives led him to South Africa and Bushman’s Hole – Boesmansgat – where, together with ‘dive-buddy’ Don Shirley he dived to a record depth of 270 metres.

During that dive, Dave swam along the bottom of the hole, discovering the corpse of Deon Dreyer, a young diver who had disappeared in the Gomes expedition a decade before. Unable to free the body, Shaw returned to the surface, reported the find, and promised the Dreyer family he would return to retrieve Deon and bring him to the surface for proper burial.

News of the pledge got out and when Dave Shaw, Don Shirley and the team returned to Boesmansgat they were accompanied by a large media contingent, and Dave was wired up to a documentary camera for the dive.
Spoiler alert for those who don’t remember: Shaw was entangled in Deon’s ropes and drowned, but the two corpses floated to the surface. Shirley survived to tell the story which caused a sensation, and the whole affair has been drenched in purple prose.

Too technical on the one hand, too sentimental on the other, the book cannot seem to decide on its readership. On the one hand we have tear-jerking passages about God, family, personalities and relationships which might prove a bit too much even for readers of Huisgenoot.

On the other hand, however, the pages devoted to descriptions of ambient pressure diving, in-water recompression, Hammerhead control units, trimix, gas physics and physiology [to name just a few but you get the idea] are of interest only to the serious enthusiast.

Still, ‘Into the Wild’, the story of the supremely unlikable Chris McCandles, became a popular film, and ‘Raising the Dead’ is just crying out for the Big Screen makeover. As I said, all the ingredients – except good writing – are already in place.½