The Silent Sea by Clive Cussler and Jack Du Brul

This is formulaic Cussler, and a good airplane book, an entertaining fast read, but also not one you need to run out and purchase. The primary plot is feasible, and starts with a historical context. It was Gavin Menzies book entitled 1421 that set forth the hypothesis that the Chinese explored the world 70 years before Columbus set sail, and if you haven't read that one, I would recommend it. The trail involves information about an ancient Chinese junk which was lost in the "land of ice." Cussler simultaneously develops a story that takes place in modern day Argentina, recently under a new dictatorship which forms an alliance with China to extract oil from the Antarctic. To be the heroes and to carry out the action, we have the hero Juan Cabrillo and his best friend Max Hanley, as well as all of the other usual post Dirk Pitt heroes. Ultimately, I'm glad that I did not spend more than one day on this one.

West Coast Don

The Wrecker by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

Cussler again writes with a coauthor, this time it is Justin Scott. This book is a period piece that takes place almost exclusively in 1907. The plot takes place around building a railroad line through a particularly difficult place in the Rockies. The railroad tycoon is Osgood Hennessy. He owns the Southern Pacific Railroad, but he also wants to corner the market on all railroads in the U.S. However, he has a foil, the Wrecker, whose true identity is not revealed until near the end of the story. As clever as Hennessy is at pushing forward his plans, the Wrecker is equally clever at thwarting those moves and pushing Hennessy towards bankruptcy. There is a race against time to complete the main bridge and tunnels through the Cascade Cutoff before winter starts. Hennessy knows that if he does not get done in time, that he will never get the funding that he needs to complete the project and become the richest man in America. In what must be akin to the Pinkertons, Hennessy hires the Van Dorn Detective Agency to guard his rail and get the Wrecker, and their best detective is Isaac Bell. Bell is the main character who slowly and gradually gets closer to figuring out the identity of the Wrecker. Of course, the story includes beautiful women, politicians, and relationship intrigues. Overall, this book falls into my “airplane book” category. There were times when I thought the authors were getting lost in the details rather than pushing the plot. I learned more about railroads than I had known before. For me, it was fun to think about my grandfather who in the 1920s to 1940s, was a conductor on the Nickle Plate Railroad that ran from Dayton, Ohio, to Chicago, with my home, Fort Wayne, being the midway point of the line. His stories about encountering the Capone boys were always interesting (but I digress, again).

West Coast Don

Corsair by Clive Cussler

Jack Du Brul is the co-author with Cussler on this one, just as he was on Plague Ship. A corsair is a pirate ship and Cussler, as usual, puts the modern day adventure in a historical context. This one starts with the Jeffersonian era Barbary pirates of Libya, works its way to modern day Somali pirates, and then to the specific current action in modern day Libya. He intertwines two main plot lines. One is solving the ancient day mystery and the other is the current action that involves the kidnap of today’s Secretary of State as she flies to Libya with promising plans to bring peace to the Middle East and to bring harmony to Arabs and all of their perceived enemies. Of course, at the end of the book, Cussler brings the two story lines together. For the most part, this book is plausible, but there was one dire fight scene that was hysterical. The protagonist is Juan Cabrillo, not Dirk Pitt, who is only mentioned once in the book. This is one of the “Oregon Files” books, the Oregon being the ship run by Cabrillo. Cabrillo had one of his legs blown off in a prior altercation. (I can’t remember whether it was right or left leg, but forgive me, that is an error that doctors have been known to make.) It was replaced with a remarkable prosthetic. The fight scene takes place on top of a moving train and it takes place between Cabrillo and a terrorist. At one point, Cabrillo unsnaps his prosthesis and starts clubbing his adversary with it. As he pursues the terrorist, with Cabrillo’s superior balance, he is hopping atop the moving train on one leg while swinging at his foe with the other. Maybe it’s just me, but I found that one to be a bit over the top. This was fun and quick read, and I’d put in my “airplane book” category – make sure you buy it in paperback.

West Coast Don

Plague Ship and The Chase by Clive Cussler

I haven’t provided too many reviews in the club. Most of my recent readings have been work related and I wouldn’t want to bore everyone with that stuff! I took a break and read a couple of Clive Cussler books, Plague Ship and The Chase. I loved The Chase. It starts in the 1950s with a salvage team pulling a train out of Flathead Lake in Montana. We then go back to 1906 to a series of bank robberies with a cunning and brutal thief. Authorities enlist the assistance of Detective Isaac Bell to bring in the “Butcher Bandit”. Bell tracks the bandit all across the west with stops in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Bisbee, AZ before getting to San Francisco. He finds that apprehending the thief is much harder than simply identifying him.

Plague Ship is the 5^th in the Oregon series. East Coast Don had correctly equated another book in the series, Golden Buddha, to an A-Team episode. Plague Ship is much better, but still has some of those elements. The team of socially-conscious mercenaries aboard the Oregon (high-tech command center disguised as dilapidated freighter) starts this story stealing nuclear submarine missiles from the Iranians. As they depart, they come across a drifting cruise ship and find almost all the passengers are dead. They rescue the one survivor just before the ship explodes. I’m not giving anything away here as there’s a big picture of a ship exploding on the cover of the book!!! The team finds this incident is only a small piece of a cult’s plan to change the future.

I give The Chase top marks and highly recommend it. Plague Ship was also very entertaining. It’s a fairly predictable genre, but still enjoyable for a long plane ride.

Chris Bo in Austin

The Golden Buddha by Clive Cussler

Also recommended is Golden Buddha, the latest Clive Cussler which he co-wrote with Craig Dirgo. I think it is the best Cussler yet. He has evolved. Instead of only using women as the objects of sex (not such a bad thing), he now uses them as parts of his team of operatives. The men are not entirely the equivalent of teenage-fantasy machismo (not such a bad thing either). I thought the dialogue was better and not the old silly banter, but he does some of that, too. This plot has to do with returning the Dalai Lama (you remember, he was mentioned in Caddy Shack) to power in . Very well done.

WC Don