The Ludwig
Conspiracy
Oliver Potzsch
Read it in Hardback
at 464 pages, they smelled wonderful.
Despite how the
pages smelled, Potzsch failed to truly captivate me with this pretty basic
tale. Ever read a Dan Brown book? Good then you get the formula. Instead of Robert Langdon professor we have
Steven Lukas, antiquated book seller.
Add initial intrigue, mystery, a scary and formidable evil thug, and a
plot that revolves around an interesting character and events of history and we
are off to the Lost Symbol…wait, I mean the Ludwig Conspiracy.
The last Bavarian
monarch was an interesting guy, and probably legitimately crazy. In an era of industrialization and gun
powder, Ludwig was building fairy tale castles in the Bavarian mountains and
really doing his best not to get dragged into Prussian/Germany politics. He was spending vast amounts of money on what
his constituents believed to be a complete waste of money. These things we know to be true. At some point though the vassalages of power
switched to the various more modern establishments and Ludwig was headed
straight down the path of disposition. It
is never easy to dispose of royalty and the means in which it was done are
still hazy to this day. These hazy bits
are the vehicle used to propel the story.
Mr. Lukas is sitting
in his abandoned book shop enjoying a book when all hell breaks loose, through
some hazy circumstances he finds himself in the possession of the plausible one
true source, a diary, of the events directly leading up to the disposition and
events that happened after Ludwig had been captured. Of course there is more to the story, but you
get the idea. Lukas has to run about the
country decoding the journal and advancing the plot to the next big
discovery. Along the way lays danger,
intrigue, love, and everything else you would expect in a Dan Brown book. Mr. Potzsch is capable but obviously looking
to a well-established formula for some success.
While I am
fascinated by Ludwig, the castles that he built in the era he built them, and
the general state of affairs of Bavaria in the late 1900's; the story was
forgettable and the puzzles that his characters face where not all that
interesting to me.
Nice try Potzsch but
I'll refrain from your future work until I see something more original come
from your type writer.
No comments:
Post a Comment