Back in November 1537, Cardinal Olav Engelbrektsson had a gold crown encrusted with jewels and other important treasures. He was the Archbishop of Nidaros and had ruled Norway due to the lack of a king and the black death. He has been in exile and hiding these past seven months as Christian III became king of Denmark and claimed Norway as a dependency. Cardinal Engelbrektsson plans to seize power again. The first part of that is for the crown and other treasures to be loaded aboard the wagons so that he and his group can move out on their journey back to power.

In the present day as The Cardinal’s Curse begins, Avery Turner and Carter Mosley are deep in the cold waters of Hudson Bay. She has a new dive computer, TreaureTech’s DiveNav, that she designed and created, strapped to her wrist. They are diving to find the wreck of the yacht, Moneymaker. The long missing yacht may hold the body of Broadway showgirl, Melody Fisher, and the NYPD, and others need it found. But, first, the new tech on her wrist needs to work and it clearly has a glitch that is making things even more dangerous.

Those cold waters are just a taste of what awaits them in the Antarctic. Dr. Noah Wyndham is leading an expedition to find the legendary lost ship, Fortitude. While the sunken ship is probably well preserved due to the incredibly cold waters, those same cold waters make any dive to it very dangerous. That assumes they can even get to it because of the depth of the wreck, the Antarctic environment, and a lot of other factors.

The expedition is already deep into Antarctica and has been hard at work for several months with little to no success. The expedition is twofold--one is climate research as they seek a way to artificially rebuild the Antarctic shelf ice as a way to fight the well documented climate change problem. The secondary research project and the one Dr. Wyndham wants Carter, Turner, Harrison, for is to help find the Fortitude. Dr. Wyndham hopes that, by finding the Fortitude, the massive media attention of their discovery, will bring additional funding to continue their shelf ice research. Funds are running out and winter is coming. They have only days left to find the Fortitude before winter descends and they need help now.

Avery Carter and Turner Mosely are enthusiastic about joining the expedition. Harrison has grave reservations about all of it, but goes along with the others in the quest to find the Fortitude. Much like an iceberg, what they know going in, is just the tip of a huge and dangerous iceberg.

Book two of the of the Turner and Mosely Files that began with The General’s Gold is another fun filled action read. Along with plenty of history and science, there is a lot of action at the ends of the earth where survival can be measured in seconds.

The Cardinal’s Curse is another solidly good read and well worth your time. Like any good series, this builds on the first book, so I recommend you read that one first before embarking here. The third book in the series, The Pirate's Secret, is currently scheduled to be released October 29th.


Both the publisher, Severn River Publishing, by way of NetGalley, as well as author Bruce Robert Coffin supplied ARCs for my use. In neither case was there any expectation of a review.


Kevin R. Tipple ©2024