Will o'the Glen on Books

Rachel Lance, the biomedical engineer who authored the first book I reviewed here at Will o'the Glen on Books : In The Waves , about the fate of the Confederate States submarine CSS Hunley and its crew after the sinking of the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor on February 17th, 1864; is back with another deeply researched scientific thriller: The Chamber Divers .      The Chamber Divers , by In The Waves  author Rachel Lance is a       true-life scientific  thriller that the reader will find is hard to put down. In The Chamber Divers Dr Lance has jumped forward in time 70+ years from the time of the Hunley to one of the most critical periods in modern history, the Second World War, bringing to light the efforts of a dedicated group of scientists who put their own bodies on the line in support of the Allied effort to conquer fascism. The Chamber Divers draws the reader in with a prologue chapter about the ill-fated Dieppe raid, an infamously fa...

It is a rare and beautiful thing to find a non-fiction book that reels you in by appealing to multiple subjects of interest, and In The Waves , by Rachel Lance, was just such a book for me. The subtitle – My Quest to Solve the Mystery of a Civil War Submarine – and the back cover blurb, “How a determined scientist cracked the case of the first successful—and disastrous—submarine attack” were clues to how well this book would line up with subjects that intrigue me. As a mechanical engineer by training and profession, anything to do with scientific and engineering investigations is of interest to me. With a career in the U. S. defense industry, and specifically submarines, that started in the Reagan era, coupled with a general interest in military history, the story of the Confederate submarine HL Hunley which lies at the heart of this book certainly piqued my interest. The Hunley , which famously sank the U.S. Navy blockade ship Housatonic with a black powder “torpedo” in February ...