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City of Gold
A rumour is going around the world that a vast source of gold has been discovered, if it's true it could mean the downfall of the US dominance over the financial world.
An international dealer in antique maps flies in to conclude the deal of his life. But at the meeting with his mysterious principals, he is double-crossed and murdered.
In New York INTERSEC Section 15 have been tasked by the US Treasury to find the gold and secure it for the US. But, for Jack Marlow and his team, the race to find the gold soon turns into a race to stay alive.
An international dealer in antique maps flies in to conclude the deal of his life. But at the meeting with his mysterious principals, he is double-crossed and murdered.
In New York INTERSEC Section 15 have been tasked by the US Treasury to find the gold and secure it for the US. But, for Jack Marlow and his team, the race to find the gold soon turns into a race to stay alive.
496 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 2013
7 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Anton Gill
64 books66 followersAnton Gill worked for the English Stage Company, the Arts Council of Great Britain, and the BBC before becoming a full-time writer in 1984. He has written more than twenty books, mainly in the field of contemporary history.
aka Oliver Bowden
aka Oliver Bowden
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 2, 2023
The idea of a search for the lost city of gold Eldorado, between a James Bond-esqe hero and a nefarious group that plans world domination with the riches of the city seems like an idea that writes itself and has a lot of opportunity for fun and excitement. This the second in a series following agent Jack Marlow (I didn’t know this when I started, but carried on anyway against my own pedantic, better nature of always reading the first in a series) who works for Intersec, a shadowy intelligence agency.
I love this genre of adventure, action books, even if most turn into a bit of brainless fun by the end. Ancient mysteries, lost treasures, evil organisations planning on using said historical treasure to control the world; it triggers my love for Indiana Jones that I still have today. So is City of Gold a good, rollicking adventure thriller with escapes, gun battles and chases through snake infested jungles or is a treasure hunt with an empty chest at the end?
Jack Marlow is top agent at Intersec, but is considered by his boss to be a loose cannon, especially after his last mission (which I'm guessing was the previous book). However a situation has forced Jack back into the field. The world markets are being spooked by talk and movements on the price of gold, that could potentially crash the global economy. After a dealer in historical maps is found brutally murdered, Intersec think there might be a link between the rumours that are threatening the markets with a mysterious giant source of gold and a sinister group from history that might have acquired a map drawn by famous Elizabethan explorer Sir Walter Raleigh on his search for the legendry Incan city of Eldorado, the city of gold. Jack is tasked to unearth who this shadowy cabal are, the truth about the map and if Eldorado actually exists and get there before this cabal can reach it. Aided by Intersec operatives Laura and Leon and by Natasha; who working undercover with this cabal but then joined forces with Jack, but who might have a personal history with the search for the lost city.
A race against time to find the lost city of Eldorado seems a shoe in for a fun adventure, but this book never really I feel grasps that, and is more like a James Bond style story with Eldorado awkwardly tacked on, rather than really lean into the historical mystery more.
It’s the second in a series I get, but doesn’t do a good or any kind of job to get new readers up to speed. Like who does Jack work for? Intersec? Who are they? A government agency? Private? What’s Jack’s history? There feels like there’s an element of coercion to his work for Intersec, but nothing on that here. The blurb for the previous book says Jack works for Interpol, but I’m pretty sure Interpol don’t send assassins to kill their agents if they don’t report in or hints of going rogue. You get bits that he might be a ex-soldier but nothing more than a quick mention of Afghanistan. It just seems like its a secret agency just move on. Maybe it was all in the previous book, but not even a quick mention for readers who started here, just makes everything seem badly explained.
There are points in the chapters set in the present are broken up by chapters set in the past, either following Sir Walter Raleigh on his quest through the Brazilian rainforest searching for Eldorado or his return to England, where as part of the ‘Brotherhood’ is trying to prevent the Chevaliers; a secret religious order that wants to return the world to a more fundamentalist society without the trappings of the modern world, getting their hands on the untold wealth of this city. Then chapters following a mix others, who have had access to Raleigh’s map and even tried searching for the city. These were good chapters until they wasn’t. Raleigh hunting for the gold on dangerous boat journey through the rainforest against Amazonian tribes, or his and his colleagues’ cat and mouse meetings and escapes back in England against the new King James and the Chevaliers, were good, but the later ones, following random people who possessed the map, like a German aristocrat or Spanish industrialist seemed to stretch the book for no reason. It came as no surprise really that the hunt for Eldorado involved the Nazis at some point. Its either Nazis or the Knight Templars who are linked in some way to these historical mysteries. While the start was good, these went on for too long and overloaded too much with mundane stuff, at the expense it seems for something a bit more action. But that’s something could be laid to the rest of the book also.
While there a decent number of action scenes here, they fizzle out pretty quick and lack enough umph to really make an impact. There’s a lot of globetrotting, which isn’t really a problem and something to expect in these kinds of stories, but looking back it seemed much of it was just a lot of going back and forth without much need to. I think there are three separate occasions they travel to Brazil. I’d say there’s at least one location too many, that could have easily been removed without any trouble.
The characters are not the most original; that doesn't have to be a problem if they fun and interesting. The problem is they aren’t. Jack, is so obviously a James Bond stand-in. Suave, fine dining upper class, stoic, carrying some personal weight. He just lacked something to really latch on to like him, when there are countless characters like him in countless books. Perhaps there was more in the first book, that made Jack more fleshed out, that's missing here, but in this book, other than those clichés, is a bit of a blank slate. The other characters don’t fair much better. Leon, another Intersec operative could have been left out completely, and other than he was on suspension from the last mission with Jack, again without context, and that he has a family, I know nothing else about him and a few snippets of dialogue in meetings or other people mentioning him, does nothing. Laura seems to fill the new version of Money Penny; being more action and authoritative as head of Jack’s team. But except for being torn between following the rule book to help her career or trusting Jack’s gut (which is always right) and being not so secretly in love with him, there’s not much else there. Natasha, has a bigger role to play, undercover with the Chevaliers but descended from the Brotherhood, out to stop them getting to Eldorado. Her role isn’t fleshed out much, the whole Brotherhood thing is never given a proper purpose, and she might get stuck into the action, most of her agency is to be the mysterious girl (Peter Andre reference) and love interest to Jack; but the have less chemistry than from a bad James Bond film and the sex scenes are a bit cringey. The villains aren’t really anything to write home about either. The lack any real depth and just fall into moustache-twirling villains who are evil for the sake of it. There grand scheme, is barely mentioned, and mostly by Intersec. The whole return to religious purity thing is very vague and Jack’s comments on perhaps the Chevaliers ideals might have changed since the Middle Ages is never followed up with. The Chevaliers being jointly financed by the North Koreans is mentioned in like one live of dialogue. They are cartoonishly evil with nothing behind it.
At times the dialogue can seem forced, like feeling a need to put something in there because of a worry that a couple people have to be talking or else it’s weird. This doesn’t really happen with the main cast, but with just random people littering a scene (like a couple of construction workers who find Jack after his near fatal attack). The dialogue just seems bad, unneeded and forced. This happens a few times and it’s reads as odd.
I was getting toward the end of the book, and it hit me, I was about twenty pages from the end and realised that they haven’t reached Eldorado yet. The final act happens so quickly and without any major battle and happens just by Jack observing from behind a bush (I’m not joking) or in a quick passing comment that entire book built up to a massive anti-climax, that I was but shocked (). I don’t even think it was lazy, just a really bad decision.
Before the rushed, messy ending, the book was ok, but a mix of details more than likely that were in the previous book and no attempt was made to catch up new readers here and cliched characters and situations acted more of a weight on the story and offered nothing different or exciting. With the ending the book loses anything it may have had going for it. There are much better adventure titles than this; while I’ve only read a few, Clive Cussler was always one to go to, I personally like the Eddie and Nina books by Andy McDermott like The Hunt for Atlantis, which have that excitement and fun, and exploration of the historical mystery the book is supposed to be about for a start. This makes it a hard one to recommend, when there are so many better books like it out there, without an ending that seems more like an unfunny joke. I'd suggest stay away.
I love this genre of adventure, action books, even if most turn into a bit of brainless fun by the end. Ancient mysteries, lost treasures, evil organisations planning on using said historical treasure to control the world; it triggers my love for Indiana Jones that I still have today. So is City of Gold a good, rollicking adventure thriller with escapes, gun battles and chases through snake infested jungles or is a treasure hunt with an empty chest at the end?
Jack Marlow is top agent at Intersec, but is considered by his boss to be a loose cannon, especially after his last mission (which I'm guessing was the previous book). However a situation has forced Jack back into the field. The world markets are being spooked by talk and movements on the price of gold, that could potentially crash the global economy. After a dealer in historical maps is found brutally murdered, Intersec think there might be a link between the rumours that are threatening the markets with a mysterious giant source of gold and a sinister group from history that might have acquired a map drawn by famous Elizabethan explorer Sir Walter Raleigh on his search for the legendry Incan city of Eldorado, the city of gold. Jack is tasked to unearth who this shadowy cabal are, the truth about the map and if Eldorado actually exists and get there before this cabal can reach it. Aided by Intersec operatives Laura and Leon and by Natasha; who working undercover with this cabal but then joined forces with Jack, but who might have a personal history with the search for the lost city.
A race against time to find the lost city of Eldorado seems a shoe in for a fun adventure, but this book never really I feel grasps that, and is more like a James Bond style story with Eldorado awkwardly tacked on, rather than really lean into the historical mystery more.
It’s the second in a series I get, but doesn’t do a good or any kind of job to get new readers up to speed. Like who does Jack work for? Intersec? Who are they? A government agency? Private? What’s Jack’s history? There feels like there’s an element of coercion to his work for Intersec, but nothing on that here. The blurb for the previous book says Jack works for Interpol, but I’m pretty sure Interpol don’t send assassins to kill their agents if they don’t report in or hints of going rogue. You get bits that he might be a ex-soldier but nothing more than a quick mention of Afghanistan. It just seems like its a secret agency just move on. Maybe it was all in the previous book, but not even a quick mention for readers who started here, just makes everything seem badly explained.
There are points in the chapters set in the present are broken up by chapters set in the past, either following Sir Walter Raleigh on his quest through the Brazilian rainforest searching for Eldorado or his return to England, where as part of the ‘Brotherhood’ is trying to prevent the Chevaliers; a secret religious order that wants to return the world to a more fundamentalist society without the trappings of the modern world, getting their hands on the untold wealth of this city. Then chapters following a mix others, who have had access to Raleigh’s map and even tried searching for the city. These were good chapters until they wasn’t. Raleigh hunting for the gold on dangerous boat journey through the rainforest against Amazonian tribes, or his and his colleagues’ cat and mouse meetings and escapes back in England against the new King James and the Chevaliers, were good, but the later ones, following random people who possessed the map, like a German aristocrat or Spanish industrialist seemed to stretch the book for no reason. It came as no surprise really that the hunt for Eldorado involved the Nazis at some point. Its either Nazis or the Knight Templars who are linked in some way to these historical mysteries. While the start was good, these went on for too long and overloaded too much with mundane stuff, at the expense it seems for something a bit more action. But that’s something could be laid to the rest of the book also.
While there a decent number of action scenes here, they fizzle out pretty quick and lack enough umph to really make an impact. There’s a lot of globetrotting, which isn’t really a problem and something to expect in these kinds of stories, but looking back it seemed much of it was just a lot of going back and forth without much need to. I think there are three separate occasions they travel to Brazil. I’d say there’s at least one location too many, that could have easily been removed without any trouble.
The characters are not the most original; that doesn't have to be a problem if they fun and interesting. The problem is they aren’t. Jack, is so obviously a James Bond stand-in. Suave, fine dining upper class, stoic, carrying some personal weight. He just lacked something to really latch on to like him, when there are countless characters like him in countless books. Perhaps there was more in the first book, that made Jack more fleshed out, that's missing here, but in this book, other than those clichés, is a bit of a blank slate. The other characters don’t fair much better. Leon, another Intersec operative could have been left out completely, and other than he was on suspension from the last mission with Jack, again without context, and that he has a family, I know nothing else about him and a few snippets of dialogue in meetings or other people mentioning him, does nothing. Laura seems to fill the new version of Money Penny; being more action and authoritative as head of Jack’s team. But except for being torn between following the rule book to help her career or trusting Jack’s gut (which is always right) and being not so secretly in love with him, there’s not much else there. Natasha, has a bigger role to play, undercover with the Chevaliers but descended from the Brotherhood, out to stop them getting to Eldorado. Her role isn’t fleshed out much, the whole Brotherhood thing is never given a proper purpose, and she might get stuck into the action, most of her agency is to be the mysterious girl (Peter Andre reference) and love interest to Jack; but the have less chemistry than from a bad James Bond film and the sex scenes are a bit cringey. The villains aren’t really anything to write home about either. The lack any real depth and just fall into moustache-twirling villains who are evil for the sake of it. There grand scheme, is barely mentioned, and mostly by Intersec. The whole return to religious purity thing is very vague and Jack’s comments on perhaps the Chevaliers ideals might have changed since the Middle Ages is never followed up with. The Chevaliers being jointly financed by the North Koreans is mentioned in like one live of dialogue. They are cartoonishly evil with nothing behind it.
At times the dialogue can seem forced, like feeling a need to put something in there because of a worry that a couple people have to be talking or else it’s weird. This doesn’t really happen with the main cast, but with just random people littering a scene (like a couple of construction workers who find Jack after his near fatal attack). The dialogue just seems bad, unneeded and forced. This happens a few times and it’s reads as odd.
I was getting toward the end of the book, and it hit me, I was about twenty pages from the end and realised that they haven’t reached Eldorado yet. The final act happens so quickly and without any major battle and happens just by Jack observing from behind a bush (I’m not joking) or in a quick passing comment that entire book built up to a massive anti-climax, that I was but shocked (). I don’t even think it was lazy, just a really bad decision.
Before the rushed, messy ending, the book was ok, but a mix of details more than likely that were in the previous book and no attempt was made to catch up new readers here and cliched characters and situations acted more of a weight on the story and offered nothing different or exciting. With the ending the book loses anything it may have had going for it. There are much better adventure titles than this; while I’ve only read a few, Clive Cussler was always one to go to, I personally like the Eddie and Nina books by Andy McDermott like The Hunt for Atlantis, which have that excitement and fun, and exploration of the historical mystery the book is supposed to be about for a start. This makes it a hard one to recommend, when there are so many better books like it out there, without an ending that seems more like an unfunny joke. I'd suggest stay away.
December 4, 2023
Jason Bourne meets The Davinci Code with an Indiana Jones backdrop. The ending was a little anticlamactic for my taste, but the body of the book and lead up was awesome. The historical narrative was incredible, and this story was well thought out.
October 26, 2013
The city of gold is an exciting book which takes you on a extraordinary journey to find the El Dorado :-) Jack Marlow is a mixture of James Bond, Robert Langdon & Macgiver haha
March 13, 2017
I picked up Anton Gill's City of Gold because it was set in Brazil. To be honest with BRAZIL 1595 emblazoned on the back, I was expecting more of a historical novel. I was partly right.
City of Gold is a parallel narrative spy thriller - weaving the history of Sir Walter Raleigh's map of the legendary city of Eldorado (through Elizabethan and Jacobin times, to an expedition in early 19th by Alexander von Humboldt and finally to the Nazi's and Franco's Spain) with a contemporary thriller as the gold markets are flooded (threatening the global economic collapse) and a race to find the map by INTERSEC agents Jack Marlowe and his colleagues, the mysterious Natasha Fielding and the agents of the shadowy Chevaliers D’Uriel.
I enjoyed the historical sections of the story, its intersection and extrapolation with real historical figures (like Raleigh, Kit Marlowe, von Humboldt etc). I also liked the characters, the intricacy of the plot, many of the action scenes and the description. Overall, I enjoyed the book except for a few glaring exceptions. More than once, a lengthy dialogue exchange lost place of the speaker but harder to ignore was a couple of instances I found hard to believe (that Jack, for instance, is pillion passenger in a daring, pounding and death-defying motorbike escape just hours after a torture that often results in an agonizing death but really hardly worse for the wear a day or two later), or a casual one sentence replacement of Shakespeare with Kit Marlow (ie Shakespeare dies at Deptford, not Kit who takes his place) or even the way Natasha falls for Jack Marlowe & they both fall into bed with each other (within hours of meeting and of Jack’s bruising torture; or even how often and quickly Jack falls in the hands of the opposition). I also didn't enjoy the graphic detail presented in torture scenes (though I guess probably realistic) which seemed to presented with a certain relish. But I could have glossed over these few scenes except that the after all the build-up, the race for time and clues, after all the gruesome deaths and the search for the original map and for Eldorado over the centuries & into the present time - I found the ending totally underwhelming. So, for me 3 1/2 or 3 stars rather than 4.
City of Gold is a parallel narrative spy thriller - weaving the history of Sir Walter Raleigh's map of the legendary city of Eldorado (through Elizabethan and Jacobin times, to an expedition in early 19th by Alexander von Humboldt and finally to the Nazi's and Franco's Spain) with a contemporary thriller as the gold markets are flooded (threatening the global economic collapse) and a race to find the map by INTERSEC agents Jack Marlowe and his colleagues, the mysterious Natasha Fielding and the agents of the shadowy Chevaliers D’Uriel.
I enjoyed the historical sections of the story, its intersection and extrapolation with real historical figures (like Raleigh, Kit Marlowe, von Humboldt etc). I also liked the characters, the intricacy of the plot, many of the action scenes and the description. Overall, I enjoyed the book except for a few glaring exceptions. More than once, a lengthy dialogue exchange lost place of the speaker but harder to ignore was a couple of instances I found hard to believe (that Jack, for instance, is pillion passenger in a daring, pounding and death-defying motorbike escape just hours after a torture that often results in an agonizing death but really hardly worse for the wear a day or two later), or a casual one sentence replacement of Shakespeare with Kit Marlow (ie Shakespeare dies at Deptford, not Kit who takes his place) or even the way Natasha falls for Jack Marlowe & they both fall into bed with each other (within hours of meeting and of Jack’s bruising torture; or even how often and quickly Jack falls in the hands of the opposition). I also didn't enjoy the graphic detail presented in torture scenes (though I guess probably realistic) which seemed to presented with a certain relish. But I could have glossed over these few scenes except that the after all the build-up, the race for time and clues, after all the gruesome deaths and the search for the original map and for Eldorado over the centuries & into the present time - I found the ending totally underwhelming. So, for me 3 1/2 or 3 stars rather than 4.
February 22, 2022
It was like an action-packed, suspenseful Hollywood movie in text. Not one of the genres I usually turn to, but I absolutely loved reading it. Interesting, picturesque, flawless and motivational.
March 24, 2015
barely readable......
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews