File: The Mysterious Case of Rudolph Diesel

This book comes at Rudolf Diesel's disappearance with, what I would call, a certain type of "Mainstream Media Naïveté," with which I'm sure the author is familiar. The book seemed like it was putting forth a novel (as in new), surprising proposition about the event, which I'm not sure is the case. Perhaps all this conspiracy research has jaded me. But yes, Rudolf Diesel and the Brits were people too, and people do deceptive people stuff. Brundt did provide what is, as near as I can tell, a fair amount of new research regarding Diesel as I understand that he was able to access and interpret Diesel's original documents (or copies thereof), which also made it worth reading. Also, if you enjoy war history, or if you like learning about World War I, I would recommend this book. I've never been extraordinary drawn to WWI history, but this book made me interested in it and did a good job personalizing the key players and their motivations. That said, overall I found it to be a rather obvious read. For instance, I listened to it on audiobook - fairly regularly when the narrator would say something, I felt like I immediately knew what was about to be said next before the words were spoken - I strangely found myself feeling frustrated at having to listen to what I already knew was coming, and the accuracy rate on this was nearly unblemished. Also, I felt like some reaches were taken. For example, when Brundt used a story told by Rudolf Jr. to his father as foreshadowing an incident in water. . . I don't get it. Are we trying to just foreshadow the incident with Diesel's son's story, or are we saying Rudolf Jr. was in on it and the scandalous discussion took place next and was unheard? If the former, very weak use of foreshadowing without logical cohesion; if the latter, it wasn't made clear enough for me (I know, who am I, right? I'm Mitch Hedburg, that's right) to understand it, and it also seems like a huge, very specific inference with not much to base it on. Glad I read it and I did learn a lot about Diesel, both the engine and the man. That said, I wouldn't read it again for fun.