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Ramsey's Gold is Russell Blake's 2013 standalone treasure-hunt thriller, one of the entries in his prolific indie-published catalog from the early 2010s. Christian Hawk, a Venice-based marine-salvage expert, is hired by a Bolivian anthropologist to track an Aztec gold cache that was reportedly hidden in the Bolivian Andes after the fall of Tenochtitlan. Competing teams (Russian mafia, Bolivian narco, U. S. corporate) want the same cache.
Blake writes the treasure-hunt thriller at the brisk indie-paperback pace his readership expects. The Venice salvage chapters in the front quarter are the strongest part of the book; the Bolivian Andes set pieces in the back half lean on more standard treasure-hunt mechanics. The Hawk character is competent rather than richly drawn; the antagonist roster is functional. The plot turns are paced for the format.
Recommended for fans of indie-published treasure-hunt thrillers (Clive Cussler's earlier work, James Rollins's Sigma Force novels), and for readers looking for books like Ramsey's Gold in the Aztec-gold-in-the-Andes subgenre. Three solid stars.
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