‘The Dakota Cipher’ a historical adventure

  William Dietrich’s main character in a trio of historical novels about a soldier of fortune in the early days of the United States certainly doesn’t lack for faults.
  Ethan Gage is a hard drinker, gambler, womanizer and has about as much common sense as your average wild boar. He also changes allegiance often and serves as an agent at different times for the United States, Great Britain and France.
  Gage’s adventures take the reader on a wild ride through Europe and the Middle East during the rise of Napoleon. The first two books, “Napoleon’s Pyramids” and the “Rosetta Key” chronicle Gage, who journeyed to France as an assistant to Ben Franklin during his service as a diplomat. Gage’s reckless behavior and flight to Egypt result in a series of adventures involving mystical artifacts and the cult of the ancient Egyptian snake god Apophis.
   Gage returns to the United States, where he has experience as a fur trapper, in “The Dakota Cipher.” Gage earlier gets in serious woman trouble, as usual, when he dallies with Napoleon’s married sister.
  This is nothing compared to his problems when he is enlisted in 1801 by President Jefferson to scout the territory, which eventually becomes known as the Louisiana Purchase.
  Gage’s companion for his journey to the Great Lakes and beyond is a crazy Norwegian giant with the intimidating name of “Magnus Bloodhammer.” Gage also befriends a French voyageur and earns the enmity of two evil British aristocrats, one of whom is a lady who easily seduces Gage.
  Bloodhammer’s quest dominates the plot. He obsessed with finding an artifact, which he believes is the hammer of the Norse god Thor. The hammer was supposedly left by a medieval Norwegian expedition into what is now the interior of the United States. The expedition encounters various Native American tribes (this results in another Gage romance) with the novel concluding with an exciting but unbelievable battle between the forces of good and evil.
  Although Gage’s feckless behavior is sometimes tiring, the historical information and depiction of  America 200 years ago is fascinating. Dietrich is a historian, naturalist (he teaches at Western Washington University) and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.