Sonny McGuinness is an old-style prospector, although one who is only too happy to utilise modern techniques alongside good old-fashioned panning. In a bar he is told a tale by an old Native American (a Hopi) of a silver vein that is, as yet unregistered. The source exists on a mountain the Hopi believe to be cursed and so they never set foot on it.

Sonny makes the Trek into the desert to the mountain and finds the source, collects his sample, but not without feeling something is seriously not right about the mountain, and heads off to get it tested. When the sample is tested in the Salt Lake City lab Sonny always uses (And trusts), the analyst discovers that the source is one of Platinum, not silver – and that is far more pure than any previously discovered. And soon afterwards when he is contacted by Connell Kirkland, an executive at Earthcore who has the reputation of being the most ruthless player in the field, Sonny discovers that maybe he shouldn't have trusted the man he took the sample to.

Sonny knows when to play along and so strikes a deal with Kirkland for Earthcore, a deal that (despite his reservations about the mountain, and growing belief that the old Native American beliefs of the mountain being cursed has some basis) means Sonny will have to accompany the Earthcore team back to the mountain.

The mining corporation brings in scientists and engineers working what will be the biggest mine in the world, and their task is to dig the deepest mine in the world...but then again they are bringing an enormous amount of state of the art equipment and a lead scientist who is as brilliant as he is arrogant and annoying.

This is a fairly intense little book, and it's one that has very few characters that you will like. In fact in many, many ways only one of the main characters is likeable in any way, and that character is thoroughly cantankerous – by the way that one would be Sonny.

The rest of this book is filled with self-important callous, arrogant, thoroughly amoral folk.

And strangely despite this set of thoroughly unpleasant characters inhabiting the book it's very compelling reading – there is a definite tension surrounding the book – a real sense of menace. We know right from the off that there is a Hopi legend associated with this place stating it is a cursed place, and that it's a place that they all avoid. The author has mixed the technology of the mining company with the legends superbly well.

Being an intense read you'll need your wits about you when you read it. Reading books with this style of sf thriller content can be exceptionally hard work if you have lengthy chapters. But you will find the author has given you some assistance in reading this. The chapters are rather short. This is a real help. There's a lot to recommend this book, and anyone who enjoys sf thrillers will probably enjoy this.

Synopsis
Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lies the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world's record, three-mile-deep mine shaft. EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure.

But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting ...and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.