Copyright 1988 by Clive Cussler Enterprises, published by Pocket Books
This is a long book – 678 pages in this edition. But I finished it in less than 10 days which is a pretty good indicator of how much I enjoyed it. It isn’t great literature but it sure is a fun beach book.
For those of you not familiar with Clive Cussler’s plots and the heroic adventures of Major Dirk Pitt, Air Force officer, Special Projects Administrator at the National Underwater and Marine Administration (NUMA), son of a US Senator, antique auto collector, national superhero and sexual studmuffin, I will tell you that Cussler’s plots (and Pitt’s adventures) are always epic. This is #9 in the series of 23 Dirk Pitt adventures. He has raised the Titanic, saved the world from environmental disasters, solved the riddle of Atlantis and figured out how Abraham Lincoln was kidnapped (yeah, really). In this book he not only unearths the contents of the fabled Library of Alexandria (Egypt) – long believed to be lost forever – but also brings down a global criminal conspiracy to take over Egypt, Mexico and Brazil. And in his spare time he single-handedly saves the life of the very attractive (and hot to trot) Secretary General of the United Nations… three times.
This is all ridiculous, of course. And a lot of fun.
I hadn’t read a Dirk Pitt adventure for a couple of years because I had convinced myself that I had read them all. When I ran across this book and read the synopsis, it didn’t sound familiar. And it didn’t sound like a plot I would forget. I really enjoyed this book so I will have to go look at the entire series and see if there are any others that I have missed.
8 out of 10.