“The Golden Gate” eBook was published in 2017 and was written by Robert Buettner (http://www.robertbuettner.com). Mr. Buettner has published nine novels.

I categorize this novel as ‘PG’ because it contains scenes of Violence. The story is set in contemporary California. The main characters are retired Lieutenant Ben Sheppard who is now on the staff of a senior Senator just appointed as head of Homeland Security. The other primary character is veteran reporter Kate Boyle.

The two are brought together when Manuel Colibri, the world’s richest man is attacked while driving home across the Golden Gate Bridge. At first it is thought to be an act of terrorism, which is how Sheppard gets involved. The more information that is gathered, the stranger the case becomes. Boyle gets involved when her father, a retired lawyer, is asked to investigate the incident.

I enjoyed the just shy of 6 hours I spent reading this Science Fiction Mystery. It is mostly a Mystery with a touch of Romance. I liked the characters and the plot. The cover art is good and implies a ‘James Bond’ like character, which Sheppard turns out to be in a way. I give this novel a 4.4 (rounded down to a 4) out of 5.

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This was a well written Science fiction / mystery.
It certainly kept me guessing and was different to my normal read.
I will certainly be reading more of Robert Buettner's Novels.

Very enjoyable it is a bit derivative but he character are well written

this was a intersting story, with an unexpcted end, Something between fiction and murder. I loved to read it

Published by Baen Books on January 3, 2017

The Golden Gate imagines a near future in which Homeland Security is not an ineffective bureaucratic nightmare. Obviously, this is a work of fiction.

The early chapters of The Golden Gate follow Ben Shepard’s underwater search for an experimental car that was blown off the Golden Gate Bridge by an explosion that may or may not have been the work of terrorists. The rich car owner, Manny Colibri, was financing life extension technologies and some people think the explosion might be linked to those efforts. Subsequent chapters have reporter Kate Boyle investigating the attack upon the rich guy, with occasional encouragement from her politically incorrect father, Jack Boyle.

The novel intermittently flashes back to 1588, to the early nineteenth century, and to World War II. Historical artifacts (a helmet used by the conquistadors, a whaling harpoon, a child’s necklace) enter the story in the present after appearing in stories from the past.

The main plot has Kate and Jack and Ben Shepard trying to figure out who would benefit from Colibri’s death. Shepard and the Boyles and the reader are challenged to figure out who is behind the apparent conspiracy and how it ties into the artifacts. Only late in the book — too late, I think — does Robert Buettner make it clear why this is a science fiction novel. Until that point, the story seems like a Dan Brown novel. Still, the reader will puzzle out the carefully concealed sf element long before it is revealed. It’s just a bit too obvious, making the effort to conceal it a waste of words.

Occasional scenes, particularly one that takes place in Iraq to develop Shepard’s backstory and another that’s set in a concentration camp, are intense and dramatic. Other scenes, including one that details the technology involved in an underwater search, come across as attempts to pad the story. Buettner is at his best when he writes about the horrors of war, but much of the story is slow and does little to advance the plot or to develop the characters.

There’s some political nonsense in this novel I could have lived without. Buettner’s central characters seem to believe that an honest insult is always preferable to “politically correct” respectful behavior. At some point, adults should outgrow the need to be obnoxious or disrespectful in their honesty. When writers (via their characters) feel the need to ridicule people who hold political beliefs that differ from their own, their lack of intellectual tolerance degrades the story. That’s particularly true in science fiction, a genre that teaches the importance of diverse and unorthodox opinions (although tolerance seems to be a vanishing commodity in sf fandom in recent years).

So Buettner loses some points for celebrating narrow-mindedness and for assuming that all Latinos in California know how to get a fake social security number. He loses more points for setting a novel in the future where people complain about hippies. I think the last confirmed sighting of a hippie was in 1973. People who write sf should really try to be more creative.

Pieces of The Golden Gate are good. There are some intense action scenes, but they are few and far between. Too much of the novel drags and the characters are unidimensional. The ending is anticlimactic and a little sappy. For all those reasons, I can only give The Golden Gate a guarded recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Golden Gate by Robert Buettner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I did not know what to expect from this near future novel. What I did find was a interesting story line that was a mystery set in the near future making it Science Fiction. Kate Boyle and Ben Shepard are tasked with finding out why the car driven by Manuel Colibri was the target of a bomb. What follows is an interesting mystery that goes into the past while looking into the future. Buettner did a great job building the story line while keeping the suspense going. I had no idea who was responsible for the bomb. A interesting story that kept me reading into the night. This is one for both mystery and science fiction fans.

A unique view into the near future and the science of life extension, Buettner's The Golden Gate is an anthology of historical fiction woven into a sci-fi crime novel.

If that made you say, "Wait... what?" then you're already starting to get it.

It takes about 20% of the book to settle into a kind of rhythm, and even then the plot keeps careening into detached narratives that feel a lot like that guy at the bar who can't get from one end of a story to the other without being sidetracked 18 times. But eventually, miraculously, it turns out that every one of those detours had a point, and in the end you're staring open-mouthed at this story-telling genius who you thought at first was just some drunk guy rambling in a bar.

Read it. Read it all the way to the end. You won't be sorry.

This is a really quite exciting murder thriller inexplicably marred by the insertion of gratuitous and really dumb flashbacks. Just skip those chapters.

I received a review copy of "The Golden Gate" by Robert Buettner (Baen) through NetGalley.com.