The Coin of the Realm - Book Review

Batten down the hatches, for a storm of excitement is rapidly approaching readers who seek mystery, suspense, action, and intrigue. Deploying indelible characters, a serpentine plot, a compelling romance, and high-octane storytelling, author Roger Dubin uses his own experiences in the U.S. Merchant Marine and his first-hand knowledge of North Africa to bring to life a classic adventure in his debut novel, The Coin of the Realm.

Rick Weisman, a merchant seafarer in his mid-20s, is burdened by two legacies: a troubled mind and a heavy secret. The first is the shadow of his father’s descent into madness; the second has come to him from his Uncle Eli, who escaped Stalin’s Russia when he was a boy, built with his brothers an industrial empire in America, and practically raised his nephew when Rick’s father committed suicide with his young son as a witness.

Dying himself now, Eli has bequeathed to Rick his most treasured possession, the knowledge of which he has kept from everyone: a priceless, bejeweled, centuries-old artifact of the Romanov dynasty. He also passed on to his nephew the astonishing story of how it came to be his, and the mystical legend which has followed it through the ages: that he who bears the Zevi Coin will be led to whatever his soul is seeking, be it love, gold, glory, or God.

Devastated by his beloved uncle’s condition, Rick signs up for the first berth he can get, aboard a rusting, decrepit, World War II-era freighter named Caroline Coast. Soon he finds himself on the most perilous voyage of his life: fighting a sadistic watchmate, surviving a howling gale that nearly rips his ship in half, contending with profound visions while knocked unconscious that point him towards a monstrous conspiracy between the ship’s captain and her Egyptian passenger, Samir Abdessalam.

When Caroline Coast and a rogue trawler collide horrifically in dense fog, Rick goes into the sea to rescue the lone survivor, a Tunisian boy named Musa, with whom Rick forms a bond that stirs echoes from his own childhood. And among the bodies recovered from the collision is that of a teenaged Asian girl, chained and manacled. Rick tries to resist the maelstrom of circumstance whirling about and pulling him in, but after Abdessalam steals the Zevi Coin, murders the ship’s captain, and abducts the boy, he realizes at last that he can’t.

The star-crossed passage across the Atlantic and Mediterranean ends in the French-Arabic port of Sfax, Tunisia, where Rick is thrown together with the exotic and driven Lorraine Bouché. Half Thai, half French, obsessed with revenge against the kidnappers of her own sister, Lorraine has been working undercover with Interpol to stop the burgeoning North African trade in Asian slaves. When her family is assassinated in the escalating cycle of violence, Rick and Lorraine, united by an impossible attraction that blooms in the shade of extreme danger, are launched across the Sahara in a desperate attempt to save Musa and hundreds of children, and ultimately discover the key to all their mysteries.

And there’s a lot of them. For wrapped inside Rick’s two-fisted odyssey is another, leading him past the frontiers of the heart to the far country beyond—where nothing is asked of him, except that he give up everything he ever thought he was. A high price, which must be paid in the coin of the realm.

As intense as a gathering hurricane, evoking the power and menace of the eternal sea and the merciless sands of North Africa, this exceptionally well-written novel is utterly captivating, weaving an intricate, intertwining tale of adventure and romance, intrigue and suspense, courage and sacrifice. Readers will find the book difficult indeed to put down, turning pages as fast as possible to find out what happens next. They won’t be disappointed.