Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Summary and Reviews of Relative Danger by Charles Benoit

Relative Danger by Charles Benoit

Relative Danger

by Charles Benoit
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • Feb 1, 2004, 340 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 2006, 264 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

'A smashingly good, action-packed first novel....Benoit is a rare discovery, and one hopes that he plans to produce more adventure-oriented mysteries with the same skill and energy that propel this excellent debut' - Publishers Weekly

Picture a hotel room in 1948 Singapore. Picture a dispute between black marketer and thief Russell Pearce and an associate--one who opens fire and murders Russell Pearce.

Fast forward to present-day Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Young Doug Pearce, just fired from his steady job in the brewery, has never strayed far from home. But he's always found stories of his Uncle Russ, the family black sheep, fascinating. In comes a letter from an old friend of his dead uncle inviting him up to Toronto. Doug, at loose ends and bored with killing time, accepts. On arrival, he learns that wealthy and glamorous Edna has an agenda: she has assembled enough clues to solve the murder of Russell Pearce and to recover a legendary red diamond he was thought to be smuggling.

Doug, nervous but game, agrees to play detective. How bad can it be to jet off to a glamour spot or two and have an adventure? Whoa! By the end of his first day in Casablanca, Doug knows he's made a mistake. And while he meets people eager to help--a retired museum curator, a beautiful and self-absorbed heiress, and her elderly father, a colleague of Russell Pearce--it becomes clear that someone else is interested in Doug, someone who is also looking for the diamond.

From Morocco to Egypt to Bahrain to Singapore, Doug stumbles on. And whether he's escaping across Cairo rooftops, ducking bullets in a high-speed desert chase, or killing time in a crowded Egyptian jail cell, Doug is sure of one thing: He has no clue what he's doing. But surely he'll think of something as he's propelled full circle back to Singapore and the famed Raffles Hotel. He's definitely not 007...but will he prove to be a zero?

Chapter 1

The first shot went through the oriental patterned upholstery and lodged in the wood frame of the chair. Later, Singapore police were able to match this bullet to the 7.62 Russian TT-33 Tokarev pistol with the initials CH engraved along the back of the grip that they found under the stairwell behind the New Phoenix Hotel.

Originally known as the Peacock Hotel, the current building was gutted by a suspicious fire in the 1930s and when rebuilt was renamed, naturally, the Phoenix Hotel. Gutted again during the Japanese occupation, the owners rebuilt one more time and, to ensure that their target market—AWOL sailors, prostitutes and opium smokers—would recognize a name they had come to trust, they called it the New Phoenix Hotel.

The second shot passed through the open window of the New Phoenix Hotel and was not recovered.

The third shot struck Russell Pearce in the throat, severing both his jugular vein and his windpipe. There was an amazing amount of ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

This debut novel is heavy on the fun and light on the suspense. Our young hero, Doug, is a brewery worker from Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Within a few days of each other he finds himself sacked from his dead-end job and on the trail of a fabulous diamond, stolen by his long-dead uncle - the bad sheep of the family - who was murdered many years earlier. Seeing everything from Doug's wonderfully small town viewpoint we're taken on a whistle-stop tour from Toronto to Singapore, by way of Casablanca, Cairo and Bahrain. Along the way Doug battles off copious quantities of thugs, thieves, crooked policemen and beautiful women in a tale that is always amusing and sometimes reaches laugh out loud levels...continued

Full Review (68 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Media Reviews

Booklist - Jenny McLarin
Starred Review. Where has Benoit been hiding? With a debut novel this good, it's hard to believe he hasn't published at least 10 previous books.....This captivating debut makes great use of a familiar gambit throwing a naive, untraveled hero into foreign climes and forcing him to hit the ground running. Readers will eagerly await more from the very talented Benoit.

Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. [A] smashingly good, action-packed first novel....Benoit is a rare discovery, and one hopes that he plans to produce more adventure-oriented mysteries with the same skill and energy that propel this excellent debut.

Author Blurb Carolyn Hart
Relative Danger, Charles Benoit's derring-do debut mystery, is as exhilarating as a magnum of Dom Perignon. Benoit writes with wit, panache and guile. The non-stop pace, exotic locales, exuberant sex and swashbuckling hero combine for splendid entertainment.

Author Blurb John Robinson author of The Sapphire Sea
A rip-roaring mystery novel that spans the globe. Benoit has written a colorful story of sultry babes, dangerous souks, imperial legacies, greed and murder. From Pottsville to Singaore, every page drips with realism and verve.

Reader Reviews

dshepler

Suprise! I like mysteries!
This book was loaned to me by a friend who promised me that I would be "hooked" on mysteries after reading it. I didn't know that mysteries were so funny or that they could be about regular people. It was my week-end Summer read and was by far one ...   Read More

Write your own review!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



A compulsive traveler, occasional scuba diver, and incurable beginning saxophonist, Charles Benoit has worked in education and advertising.  He and his wife, Rose, currently live in exotic Rochester, New York.  Relative Danger is his first novel.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Relative Danger, try these:

  • To The Nines jacket

    To The Nines

    by Janet Evanovich

    Published 2004

    About this book

    More by this author

    Stephanie Plum may not be the best bounty hunter in beautiful downtown Trenton, but what she uncovers is far more sinister than anyone imagines and leads to a group of killers who give new meaning to the word hunter.

  • The Vendetta Defense jacket

    The Vendetta Defense

    by Lisa Scottoline

    Published 2002

    About this book

    More by this author

    In a case steeped in blood and memory, it will take a stroke of brilliance to save Pigeon Tony. But if anyone just might see justice done, it's this gutsy young attorney who'll risk everything to win ... including her life.

Read-Alikes are one of the many benefits of membership. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Charles Benoit
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

Books with similar themes


Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

If every country had to write a book about elephants...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now