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The Phoenician
271 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1970
About the author
Bruce Cassiday
56 books2 followersBruce Bingham Cassiday, writer and editor.
"Bruce Cassiday was a multi-talented producer of popular fiction, hard-boiled suspense and espionage tales, carefully crafted Gothics (a literary sub-genre that needs a firm hand on its inevitably Byzantine plots), medical melodramas and television novelisations, as well as "How to" tomes on lawns and landscaping, home carpentry, solar houses, dieting, and a number of ghosted biographies (only a few of which he owned up to)." (www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries...)
Pseudonyms: Carson Bingham, Max Day, Mary Anne Drew, Annie Laurie McAllister, Annie Laurie McMurdie, Burt Carrick, C.K. Fong, Lester Heath, Michael Stratford, Robert Faraday
"Bruce Cassiday was a multi-talented producer of popular fiction, hard-boiled suspense and espionage tales, carefully crafted Gothics (a literary sub-genre that needs a firm hand on its inevitably Byzantine plots), medical melodramas and television novelisations, as well as "How to" tomes on lawns and landscaping, home carpentry, solar houses, dieting, and a number of ghosted biographies (only a few of which he owned up to)." (www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries...)
Pseudonyms: Carson Bingham, Max Day, Mary Anne Drew, Annie Laurie McAllister, Annie Laurie McMurdie, Burt Carrick, C.K. Fong, Lester Heath, Michael Stratford, Robert Faraday
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July 26, 2026The Phoenician by Bruce Cassiday
Pyramid Books
Paperback
271 pages
1970
I do not recall how I came to know of this book. I am sure it was from someone’s post on social media. I know I did purchase it from a seller on Amazon. I have only ever seen a few online for purchase.
The cover art is uncredited. Which isn’t a surprise for a book of this era. The entire cover seems to derive inspiration from men’s adventure books of this period. Or at least attempt to entice similar fans to this book. The subtitle “A HERO TO STAND WITH THE MIGHTIEST” is complete hyperbole. And yes it is in all caps. The synopsis on the back cover is an editor’s attempt to jazz up the story and make it more appealing. It is only correct in a general sense. Back to the front cover, in the upper right corner there is a seal stating, “In the magnificent tradition of THE EGYPTIAN” This statement sent me down a rabbit hole and the ultimate purchase of six more books by a Finnish author I had before never heard of.
Cathcar is a Phoenician trader whose fortunes are bleak. He is in crippling debt—to seemingly everyone especially the Egyptian Pharaoh. To avert the dire sentence for this staggering debt Cathcar is given one last chance and outfitted with a small fleet of ships and tasked with circumnavigating Libya (Africa). After a couple of years at sea a storm separates his ship from the fleet and the sight of land. Instead of sailing east until striking land again Cathcar turns the ship west…
The Phoenician joins a small collection of books I have read that find Europeans in the Americas.
Casca: God of Death by Barry Sadler
The Silver Skull by Les Daniels
The Dream Quest (three books) by Lloyd St Alcorn
And of course several Viking books
Also, my copy is very worn and the spine was cracked in the last 30-50 pages. I fell asleep and dropped it on the hard floor and the book completely broke into two separate sections. I spent the next little while carrying around a piece of a book as I read it.
Addendum. The author also included an afterword in which he briefly relates some tidbits of archaeological evidence that became the idea for this novel. Lending historical credence to his fiction.
Pyramid Books
Paperback
271 pages
1970
I do not recall how I came to know of this book. I am sure it was from someone’s post on social media. I know I did purchase it from a seller on Amazon. I have only ever seen a few online for purchase.
The cover art is uncredited. Which isn’t a surprise for a book of this era. The entire cover seems to derive inspiration from men’s adventure books of this period. Or at least attempt to entice similar fans to this book. The subtitle “A HERO TO STAND WITH THE MIGHTIEST” is complete hyperbole. And yes it is in all caps. The synopsis on the back cover is an editor’s attempt to jazz up the story and make it more appealing. It is only correct in a general sense. Back to the front cover, in the upper right corner there is a seal stating, “In the magnificent tradition of THE EGYPTIAN” This statement sent me down a rabbit hole and the ultimate purchase of six more books by a Finnish author I had before never heard of.
Cathcar is a Phoenician trader whose fortunes are bleak. He is in crippling debt—to seemingly everyone especially the Egyptian Pharaoh. To avert the dire sentence for this staggering debt Cathcar is given one last chance and outfitted with a small fleet of ships and tasked with circumnavigating Libya (Africa). After a couple of years at sea a storm separates his ship from the fleet and the sight of land. Instead of sailing east until striking land again Cathcar turns the ship west…
The Phoenician joins a small collection of books I have read that find Europeans in the Americas.
Casca: God of Death by Barry Sadler
The Silver Skull by Les Daniels
The Dream Quest (three books) by Lloyd St Alcorn
And of course several Viking books
Also, my copy is very worn and the spine was cracked in the last 30-50 pages. I fell asleep and dropped it on the hard floor and the book completely broke into two separate sections. I spent the next little while carrying around a piece of a book as I read it.
Addendum. The author also included an afterword in which he briefly relates some tidbits of archaeological evidence that became the idea for this novel. Lending historical credence to his fiction.
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