Clive and Dirk Cussler |
Clive Cussler, 1931-2020, was not only a novelist, but a real-life undersea explorer. He received numerous awards not only for writing, but for his maritime exploits.
Although the books tend to be highly on the fantastic side, often with alternative history, and almost techo-thrillers, you can be sure the marine science is all based in fact.
The Dirk Pitt novels have a central theme of being underwater thrillers, usually revolving around recovery of some treasure or shipwreck. The series was begun by Clive Cussler who also founded the actual agency called the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) that appears in the books. Several books were co-authored with his son Dirk, who continued the series after his father's death in 2020.
They almost always begin with some real or possible episode in history that then ties in to the present-day plot.
The books include a fair amount of hardcore fighting, and the plots are always tied to deep sea explorations or recovery operations.
Recurring characters:
Dirk Pitt
Dirk Pitt, Junior- Dirk's son
Summer Pitt- Dirk's daughter
Hiran Yaeger, tech guru
Al Giordino, underwater technology director
Rudi Gunn, NUMA assistant director
James Sendecker, Admiral US Navy, then US Vice President
#1 The Mediterranean Caper 1973
#2 Iceberg 1975
#3 Raise the Titanic! 1976
#4 Vixen 03 1978
#5 Night Probe 1981
#6 Pacific Vortex! 1983
#7 Deep Six 1984
#8 Cyclops 1986
#9 Treasure 1988
#10 Dragon 1990
#11 Sahara 1992
#12 Inca Gold 1994
#13 Shock Wave 1996
#14 Flood Tide 1997
#15 Atlantis Found 1999
This begins with many things that I really love in a good thriller- an asteroid strike in Hudson Bay at the end of the last ice age (actually an hypothesis that won't die), an ancient chamber discovered in a mine cave-in, an unknown alphabet.
The story just gets more crazy from there. Don't look for reality, just go with the flow. The Fourth Destiny has been working for decades to take over the world by causing another catastrophe similar to the one that occurred after the pre-historic asteroid strike. Of course Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino are in the middle of the action.
I'll admit to being disappointed that even though there is a graphic with the unknown alphabet, the story doesn't go in to any detail about decoding it. The premise is that whatever Atlantis was, it certainly wasn't called that at the time. The book posits that it was a connected series of port cities that traveled the entire globe until the tidal waves caused by the asteroid wiped it out.
As is true in several of the books, they meet "Dad," who is Clive Cussler.
#16 Valhalla Rising 2001
#17 Trojan Odyssey 2003
#18 Black Wind 2004 (with Dirk Cussler)
Black Wind begins with a Japanese submarine being sent to the west coast of the US near the end of World War ii with a payload of biological warfare "bombs," but the sub is sunk without ever delivering the deadly cargo.
Two men stationed at a remote Coast Guard station in Alaska, and their dog, die from cyanide poisoning, and apparently connected to that episode, a reasearch team downwind is exposed to smallpox. When NUMA goes to explore the possible location of the source of these airborne threats, their helicopter is shot down by a Asians on a fishing trawler.
These events and other odd incidents appear to be linked to the Japanese Red Army, a militant group that had be thought long defunct.
However, it turns out that someone else is attempting to recover the lost biological weapons while diverting the blame to Japan. The action goes on and on for 600 pages.
#19 Treasure of Khan 2006 (with Dirk Cussler)
#20 Arctic Drift 2008 (with Dirk Cussler)
#21 Crescent Dawn 2010 (with Dirk Cussler)
#22 Poseidon's Arrow 2012 (with Dirk Cussler)
#23 Havana Storm 2014 (with Dirk Cussler)
#24 Odessa Sea 2016 (with Dirk Cussler)
#25 Celtic Empire 2019 (with Dirk Cussler)
#26 Clive Cussler's The Devil's Sea 2021 (by Dirk Cussler)
#27 Clive Cussler's The Corsican Shadow 2023 (by Dirk Cussler)
The story begins during WWII in 1940 when a man appears on the dock at LeHavre, France. I tries to get aboard a channel ferry for England. When he is denied passage, in desperation he attempts to at least have his suitcases taken. Meanwhile, a German air strike creates chaos.
Jump ahead to the present. Someone is apparently saboutaging metropolitan water supplies. Dirk Pitt is part of an operation to explore and salvage the wreck of a channel ferry. An international businessman is attempting to scrape together enough money to avoid total ruin at the hands of the mafia.
Fairly worthless industrial diamonds are found aboard the wreck that Dirk explored. But the more they look into what should have been on that ferry, the more complicated things become.
And a young female French research scientist who is helping Dirk is have a love affair with a very shady character.
