The opening gambit can win the game.

The Amber Enigma is a complexly woven tale of ambition, determination, political treachery, intrigue, terrorism, and murder. Lots of murder.
It would be pointless to rehearse the plotline, given the very full and informative synopsis already given, other than to say it starts in two places and times, the first being the disappearance in Germany of the fabled Amber Room at the end of World War II, and the second being the discovery in Russia, just outside of Moscow, some 70 years later of two skulls, recent but identifies unknown. This latter case is given to a senior investigator Sergei Nikishin and his colleague and friend, Dmitri, to follow through. The heavy Russian personality shines through these pages, not only because the trail followed is so grim but also because Nikishin is still trying to recover from his wife's recent suicide and the memory of his only daughter who died as a four years old child in the tsunami in Thailand years before.

Characterisation of the several main players in this drama of treasure hunting and political obsession is good, if somewhat depressing, and especially so of the two main adversaries, Nikishin and the assassin, the Caretaker, as the action moves across Europe, focused mainly on France, Germany and Russia. The feeling of place is also atmospheric and conversation is mostly mundane and realistic, not given to hyperbole. The reading by Edison McDaniels is fast paced and somewhat downbeat, befitting the subject matter, but made all the more so by his strange use of inflection of downward and more emphatic voicing of the last word in most sentences as if each is the culmination of a paragraph rather than a mere part of a much larger stream of writing. It became disconcerting and irritating after a while. Otherwise the presentation is mostly good: a few odd pronunciations and little by way of character voicings, though this was not problematic as it was clear who was speaking.

At times initially confusing as the action leaps from place to place and person to person between the various strands of the story, it does settle down into a good overview of the different but interconnected whole. It becomes a frightening overview of World politics and corruption. My thanks to the rights holder of The Amber Inigma, who, at my request via Audiobook Boom, freely gifted me a complimentary copy. If art and intrigue, treasure hunting and politics, all tied up in personal vendetta and murder detection are genres enjoyed, this is certainly a book for you. It was several stories rolled into one bigger international tale, quite an achievement. But bleak.

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