FORGOTTEN BOOK: ARTIFACT

 Artifact by Kevin J. Anderson, Janet Berliner, Matthew J. Costello, and F. Paul Wilson (2003)

For the curious, this is the first book in the Daredevils' Club series.  It's also the least book in the Daredevils' Club series.  There ain't no more.  One and done.  After reading the book. I think I know why that is.

In the prologue to this tale, It's 1982, and Arthur Marryshow, the 31-year-old friend and mentor of 16-year-old Peta Whyte, is being held prisoner by Communists on Grenada on a trumped-up (?) charged of suspected espionage.  Working with two of Arthur's friends, Peta is determined to free Arthur before he is place before a firing squad.  Arthur's friends are demolitions expert and stuntman Ray Arno and South African oil magnate Frik Van Altman.  Peta kills two guards and they manage to free Arthur on New Year's Eve, Arthur's birthday.  Since Peta was 13, she and Arthur celebrated both his and her birthdays at Danny's Grotto restaurant in New York.  Proud of his daring escape, Arthur, Ray, and Frik decided to form a Daredevil's Club," where each would have at least one exciting adventure a year and meet annually to relate it to the others.  Peta, being female, was not allowed to join.

Fast forward to 1999.  Peta and Arthur have long become lovers., and Peta is now a medical doctor.

Frik is exploring potentially rich oil deposits in the ocean by Trinidad.  His crew has drilled through the ocean floor, finding an underground river.  There, they have found pieces of some sort of artifact of an unknown composition.  The artifact appears to have been deliberately divided into pieces.  It has strange properties and Frik soon discovers that it can be a tremendous source of energy -- one that could eventually make the need for oil obsolete.  Frik's assistant, Paul Trujold, fears Frik will misuse the artifact -- Frik being greedy, amoral, and ruthless -- so he steals pieces of the artifact and sends them secretly to several friends, including Arthur and Paul's estranged daughter, Selene, who is the leader of a subversive group of Greens, fighting Frik's plans of destroying the environment.  Frik kills Paul and is determined to regain the artifact pieces.

By this time, the Daredevil's Club had frown to include underwater explorer Simon Brousseau, freelance security specialist Terris McKendry, and McKendry's partner Joshua Keene.  Moments before the annual meeting of the Daredevils' Club, Arthur Marryshow is killed in a violent explosion in the men's room of Danny's Grotto.  Peta suspects Frik is responsible and was attempting to regain the artifact piece that Trujold had sent to Arthur.

Later, Frik sends Simon down to explore the underground river.  It leads to a large sunken chamber whose walls are carved with strange, unearthly images; the chamber itself is void of any underwater life.  But Simon now has a bad heart and Peta fears for his safety. She goes after him and finds him floating in the chamber, dead; in his hand is another piece of the artifact.  Someone (sent by Frik, naturally) has followed Peta to the chamber.  She is attacked and her air line is cut and the intruder makes off with the artifact, leaving her to die.  But Peta is made of stern stuff and does not die.

Selene's group of Green vigilantes raid Frik's oil platform and a battle ensues.  Terris and Joshua happened to have snuck on board and find themselves in the middle of the battle.  Terris is shot in the chest and Joshua is injured in a explosion.  Neither one dies but each thinks the other has been killed and swears vengeance.  Joshua is nursed back to health by Selene and eventually becomes her lover.  Terris is put in charge of Frik's security and vows to kill Selene, whom he feels is responsible for Joshua's death.  Terris leads a group of mercenaries and attacks Selene's jungle camp; Peta accompanies him in the raid.  Most of Selene's people are killed and Selene, who has gone underground, is fatally wounded by a knife thrust.  Joshua returns to the camp and views the carnage and manages to come across a dying Selene.  He vows vengeance.

More violence  More killings.  More threats.  It culminates in the next meeting of the Daredevils' Club where all the pieces of the artifact are joined and something strange and horrifying happens.  Ho hum.

There are a number of problems with this novel, which appears to be case of too many cooks spoil the brother.  The sum of the parts is not greater.  The book takes us into too many diverse directions.  The characters -- one and all -- are unpleasant, unthinking, and unlikable,  even the titular "good" guys, Peta and Arthur.  Nobody rings true.  When Terris and Joshua each discover the other to be alive, Joshua forgives Terris for being responsible for killing his true love Selene, and Terris immediately turns against his employer Frik, while still not feeling guilty about slaughter Selene's Green army.  Frik, although responsible for may deaths and betrayals is punished only by being excluded from the Daredevil's Club.  And the artifact?  Despite the Lovecraftian overtones, we are left oto wonder if we are dealing with Cthulhu or with ET.

A jumbled mess with individual parts very readable, but the whole?  Meh.

So, yeah, there's a reason why this was the only Daredevils' Club adventure.