The Net, by Rex Beach, was published in 1912. Beach wrote adventure novels, which were very popular in the early 1900s. The Net tells the story of a young American, named Norvin Blake, who is in Italy for his friend’s wedding. His friend is determined to stand free of the demands of the Mafia, and is killed shortly before his wedding.
Norvin returns to America, where he discovers that the Mafia’s influence is thriving in his home town of New Orleans — in fact, the very men who killed his friend. Norvin is determined to help the police defeat the Mafia, to gain justice for his friend — and also his friend’s beautiful, fiery, not-exactly-a-widow fiancé. So, a little romance, a lot of action and detective work, and of course we get to celebrate Carnival, because its New Orleans.
I did a little research into Rex Beach’s life, and he did some interesting things. He was a gold prospector in Alaska (though not successful). And he was on the 1904 U.S. Olympics water polo team — earning a silver medal. His first novel (titled The Spoilers)was published in 1906, and was based on his experiences in Alaska. Quite a few movies have been made, based on his novels. The most recent movie adaptation was made in 1955.
This book was a Christmas gift — given to my great-grandmother and one of her brothers, from another brother and his wife. Which is super cool, and why I have a fondness for inscriptions in books.
The story was certainly exciting, full of intrigue and plot twists. But it’s not the type of story I usually read, so I didn’t enjoy at as much as someone else might have. You know, people who really like the book The Call of the Wild by Jack London (which I had to read in school, and thought was just okay). The two authors were writing books about the same time, and in the same genre, and may have influenced each other (on Wikipedia, it said Beach influenced London, with a reference to an article I couldn’t read, but in Beach’s bio on the Olympics page, it said London influenced Beach, so…) But as I do enjoy detective novels, I liked the parts that involved detective work.
CactusWriter 