Judy's Reviews > The Adventurers

Back to 1966 I go. (That is the year I am reading for My Big Fat Reading Project.*) The Adventurers was the #2 bestseller of the year and I had been putting it off because it is so long. But 2023 is my year of reading long books so it was time.

I first met Harold Robbins ten years ago when I read The Carpetbaggers. That was the #4 bestseller in 1961. I actually, secretly love such big trashy novels and used to read lots of them. They have made the bestseller lists for years but one can learn some American history from them. Also, I must say that the Presidential biographies I have read from the 20th century years are almost as lurid in some ways.

The Adventurers, set in a fictional South American country, features Dax, the son and grandson of revolutionaries, who grows up to understand that the new leader of his country is as much of a dictator as the one he replaced. Such is the way of revolutions around the world. But this book was timely due to events in Cuba and due to the way the American government used its power and money in Central and South America to fight communism: the perceived big enemy to democracy.

Robbins created a complicated hero in Dax and once I got to the half-way point, I suspected he might be doomed but I hoped he would prevail. Violence, sex, money, politics, and a few outright insane characters propelled me along for seven days and I had a good time.

*My Big Fat Reading Project is my plan to read the top 10 bestsellers, the award winners and a select list of other authors from all the years that I have lived.