Brief Synopses of the Dirk Pitt Novels

 

 

Pacific Vortex

 

    Pacific Vortex truly should be considered the first Pitt novel. Though it was published in the time span between Night Probe! and Deep Six, it was the first Pitt novel Clive wrote. As one of the two manuscripts originally sent to Peter Lampack when Clive was seeking an agent, it languished on a shelf in Clive's closet until he casually mentioned it to his publisher, which at that time was Bantam Books.

 

    Upon learning that there was an unpublished Pitt novel, it was decided to introduce the book in a paperback-only edition. Clive dusted off the manuscript and did a quick rewrite. The name of the villain Delphi Ea was changed somewhere along the line to Delphi Moran, something Clive was still unaware of when it was mentioned to him last year.

 

    Because it lacks the complex plotting and detailed writing of the later Pitt efforts, Clive wrote a disclaimer of sorts as the foreword, explaining that the novel was not up to his usual standards.

 

    An interesting side note to Pacific Vortex is that Peter Lampack, Clive's agent, was adamantly opposed to the novel being published.

 

    Telling Clive that the novel would be his ruin, he scheduled a vacation in Jamaica to coincide with the introduction. When the novel almost immediately reached number two on the New York Times paperback best-seller list, Clive called Western Union and sent an I-told-you-so telegram to Lampack in Jamaica.

 

    The plot of Pacific Vortex is straightforward enough.

 

    The United States Navy submarine Starbuck is lost in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii, and though an exhaustive search is mounted, no trace of the wreckage is located.

 

    Pitt is sunning on a beach on Oahu. Noticing a bright yellow capsule in the water, he swims out into the ocean and brings it ashore. Inside he finds pages from the log book of the Starbuck, which he then takes to the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor. He hands the capsule and its contents to Admiral Leigh Hunt.

 

    As we examine the Pitt novels, we will see the name of Leigh Hunter (or in this case, Hunt) frequently. In real life, Leigh Hunt is a close friend of Clive's. The mischief the two have created together could fill an entire book of its own.

 

    The story progresses as Pitt and the Navy attempt to locate the missing ships and the cause of their disappearance. We learn there is an underwater lair built by a mad scientist. This leads to a climactic scene where the underground city is attacked. Interestingly enough, while saving Pitt, Giordino jams his finger down the barrel of a gun, and it is blown off.

 

    The book is also interesting because it introduces Pitt's one true love, Summer, who is killed in the collapse of the underground city.

 

    She is mentioned in later books as an explanation of why Pitt can never again love one woman. In addition, it casts the future direction of the series-as Pitt drives an exotic car and much of the action is under or near water.

 

    Pacific Vortex, while lacking the more complex plot and deeper character development of the future Pitt novels, is nonetheless an enjoyable read. For the time it was written, the middle 1960s, it has held up reasonably well. It introduces Pitt, Giordino, and Sandecker and mentions Gunn, as well as starting to explore the Pitt formula that will later make Clive famous.

 

 

The Mediterranean Caper

 

    The Mediterranean Caper was the first Pitt novel to be published, though it was written second, after Pacific Vortex. It was published in 1973 by Pyramid Books and the firm of Sphere Books in London, where it was titled Mayday! Reintroduced by Sphere and simultaneously by Bantam Books in 1977 after the success of Raise the Titanic! the novel is now published by the Pocket Books division of Simon & Schuster. The Mediterranean Caper is interesting from a business standpoint. After the book went out of print the first time, Clive made an unusual move for a writer. Hoping he would have a long and successful career, Clive had Peter call the publisher and asked for the rights back to the novel. The publisher agreed because The Mediterranean Caper was then out of print.

 

    The novel, the first of Clive's to be published, was nominated for a Mystery Writers of America award as one of the five best novels of 1973.

 

    The Mediterranean Caper truly starts to show the writing style for which Clive would later become famous. Unlike later books, in which the prologue is in the past, the book starts the tradition of narration at the beginning, rather than dialogue, to allow the reader to settle into the scene being played out.

 

    The novel starts with an attack on Brady Field, a United States Air Force base in Greece, by a World War I fighter plane. NUMA is immediately featured, and by the first chapter, the reader has been introduced to both Pitt and Giordino. Pitt's past is explained. His physical appearance and Giordino's are described. Even Sandecker and his position with NUMA are explored. Clive's tradition of describing planes, cars and other mechanical devices in detail is used to good effect.

 

    The novel is the story of a former Nazi who uses an underwater cavern for smuggling. Pitt, with the help of U.S. and Greek customs officials, solves the mystery and apprehends the villains. Pitt, of course, has a love interest, Teri von Till, who we first believe is the villain's daughter but later find out is in fact on the payroll of the Greek customs inspector. The original purpose for NUMA and Pitt to be on an expedition in Greece was to locate an ancient prehistoric fish called the Teaser. At the end of the story, one is located and later captured.

 

    The epilogue is used to tie together the loose ends of the story as well as introduce the tradition of Pitt ending up with a prize for his efforts. In this case, he receives the Maybach-Zeppelin town car that Helbert owned.

 

    All in all, The Mediterranean Caper lays a firm groundwork for the novels that follow. The interplay between Pitt and Giordino is evident, as is the detailed description of planes, automobiles and other modes of transportation for which Clive is famous. If the novel can be faulted, it would be for the tendency to make too many leaps of plot. Instead of allowing the reader to attempt to discover the direction through well-littered clues, this is instead explained by Pitt in the form of dialogue. Still, the novel has held up well, with references to the time it was written few, so it has not become dated.

 

    If anything, The Mediterranean Caper should be read by Cussler fans if only to understand better the journey the Pitt books have made over the years.

 

 

Iceberg

 

    Originally published 1975 and in 1977 by Bantam Books, Inc. Iceberg became Clive's first hardcover published. First editions of the hardcover are quite rare, and collectors of Cussler memorabilia find the supply of books limited and the price high. The book enjoyed modest sales success, selling thirty-two hundred of the five thousand printed in hardcover, although reprints have kept it in print to this day.

 

    Iceberg begins with a neat hook: the first paragraph in the prologue is actually what the copilot of a plane is reading, a book within a book.

 

    From there, we progress to a Coast Guard patrol plane spotting an iceberg with a ship embedded inside. They mark the iceberg with dye, then fly away toward their base. As Iceberg by Dodd Mead & Company in they leave, a pair of men climb from inside the iceberg and call someone on a portable radio.

 

    Chapter One finds Pitt piloting a helicopter toward a Coast Guard ship and landing on her deck. As is Clive's custom, he mentions his previous book by having the commander of the ship, when introduced to Pitt, say, "By any chance the same Pitt who broke up that underwater smuggling business in Greece last year?"

 

    The plot features a missing billionaire mining engineer and genius who was involved in negotiations with the United States government. The engineer has built a device that can detect underwater mineral deposits.

 

    The theme of underwater mining is also common in future Pitt novels.

 

    Pitt pilots a helicopter and an old plane, a Ford Trimotor, which he later buys and places in his aircraft hangar/home. In addition, Pitt's diving skills are on display as he dives on a mysterious jet that had attacked the helicopter he was flying.

 

    The villains in this tale are a group of industrialists who form a plan to take over South America. Clive begins to expand on his writing skill in Iceberg. Well written descriptive scenes include a trip to a restaurant named Snorri's and a showdown with the villains in an Icelandic mansion. Rather interestingly, Pitt is beaten severely in the book, something that would probably not occur nowadays.

 

    A fantastic climax to the book is a scene in which Pitt foils the attempted murder of the presidents of French Guiana and the Dominican Republic at Disneyland. Here the writing truly jumps off the page.

 

    Iceberg is unique for another reason: Clive has the genius engineer undergo a sex-change operation. He later uses this idea in Vixen 03, where a shadowy spy we are led to believe to be a man is found to be a woman.

 

    The plotting of Iceberg truly begins Cussler's habit of convoluted story lines and high-stakes action. He uses the Cussler "what if" formula to good effect.

 

    Iceeberg sets the stage for the next Cussler novel, Raise the Titanic!, in that it introduces the idea of a mineral important to national defense, in this case zirconium. It is rather unique among the Pitt novels for a very important fact: at no time does Al Giordino make an appearance.

 

    In addition, Cussler has Pitt pose as gay, something rather odd. I doubt that nowadays Clive would have written that into the book.

 

    The novel continues the development of the Pitt novels. It is more detailed with more richly written scenes than the previous effort, and Pitt's personality and motivations are explored more deeply. An interesting side note: nowadays, if Clive makes even a minor technical error, he receives numerous letters setting him straight. In Iceberg, at least as it was originally published, Kristjan and his sister Kirsti were described as identical twins-of course, that is impossible for siblings of different sexes. Clive told me he never received a single letter pointing out the error.

 

 

Raise the Titanic!

 

    This is Clive's breakout book, where the formula he created for Pitt finally comes together seamlessly. For starters, he uses a prelude based in the past for the first time. The continuing characters are now fully developed. The Cussler "what if" scenario is utilized with great results. And the writing is fast-paced and action-packed.

 

    Clive even uses a brilliant surprise ending. The book made him a millionaire, and rightly so.

 

    It has stood the test of time and reads as well today as back in 1976 when it was first published by the Viking Press in hardcover and later by Bantam in paperback. The book was serialized in the Los Angeles Times as a cartoon strip, and Raise the Titanic! was the only Pitt novel to be made into a movie.

 

    The prelude, Clive's first set in the past, describes a man on the edge of madness who is awakened aboard a ship by an undefined noise.

 

    Through clues, the astute reader realizes the man is aboard the Titanic and the ship is sinking. At gunpoint, the man forces one of the ship's junior officers, named Bigalow, to show him below decks. There, the man locks himself in a vault to die with the ship. Bigalow survives.

 

    As the novel progresses, we learn that a top-secret defense project called the Sicilian Project requires a mineral named byzanium, thought to have been mined out of existence. The only traces that might still exist are located on a Russian island. A NUMA oceanographic expedition is used to provide the cover for a mineralogist to search the island.

 

    Pitt makes his appearance early and with excellent dramatic effect. As is the case in later works, he appears larger than life as he saves the mineralogist and carries him to safety.

 

    It is learned that the island mine had contained byzanium but was fully mined, and a search is on to find out what happened to the mineral.

 

    Then we learn that the byzanium was placed aboard the Titanic, and an intricate and expensive plan is hatched to raise the ship.

 

    The novel features a subplot about a deteriorating marriage along with a cast of Russian secret agents intent first on learning what the Sicilian Project is about and later attempting to stop the project by infiltrating the Titanic, then attempting either to take control of the ship or sink the vessel so the United States cannot recover the byzanium.

 

    Pitt is lacking a true love interest in the story, though Clive alludes to his skill in seducing the opposite sex. It's the ending that truly captures Clive's style in convoluted plotting. After all the work to raise the Titanic, the millions of dollars that were spent and the lives of numerous people, we learn that the vault that should contain the byzanium is empty.

 

    After hearing this, Pitt remembers what Bigalow had told him about the night the Titanic sank and about his confrontation with the madman who took him hostage. He returns to England, searches a grave in the town of Southey and finds the byzanium. At the end of the novel, Bigalow is buried at sea and the Sicilian Project is tested and proves successful.

 

    An interesting sidelight to Raise the Titanic! is that in the original manuscript, the president of the United States is single, and he has an affair with Dana Seagram, the NUMA archaeologist whose marriage is deteriorating. Clive was on a talk show shortly after the book came out, and a caller asked why the president and Seagram never consummated their relationship when it appeared that was about to happen. Clive told the caller, "They did, it's on page . . . " and reached for a copy of the book. After examining the novel, he found the scene had been edited out. Clive never really found out why the scene was cut, but it's interesting to note that Jackie Onassis was at the time an editor at the same publisher. Maybe Bantam thought the scene would offend her.

 

 

Vixen 03

 

    For Vixen 03, Clive kept the plot closer to home. The novel begins at an airfield less than thirty miles from where he was living, and a large portion of the story is based in Colorado. Even though Clive had scored big on Raise the Titanic! he remained in his tract home in Arvada, Colorado, and wrote Vixen 03 in his unfinished basement.

 

    Originally published in hardcover in 1978 by Viking Press, it was Viking's second and last Cussler book. The paperback was published by Bantam in 1979. The book is not as complex as later efforts, but, strangely enough, the writing has a certain undefined texture. The descriptive passages are smoothly written, and Pitt displays a humility that is not often in evidence. Vixen 03 also introduces Pitt's love interest Loren Smith for the first time.

 

    The story begins with a United States Air Force jet leaving Buckley Field, Colorado, with a top-secret overweight bomb load. After the jet suffers engine failure high above the Rocky Mountains, the pilot makes a landing in what he thinks is an open area but we later learn is a frozen lake that is unable to support the weight of the plane.

 

    Pitt is introduced in the first chapter and, in a rare circumstance, is actually taking a vacation at a cabin that had been owned by Loren Smith's deceased father. Pitt finds aircraft landing gear and an oxygen bottle in Smith's garage. Intrigued, he visits the neighbors, who are named Lee and Maxine Rafferty.

 

    The story unfolds with Pitt trying to determine where the landing gear came from. Once the serial number is traced, we learn it came from an Air Force jet on a top-secret mission.

 

    At the same time in Africa, a former Royal Navy captain named Fawkes is recruited to lead a suicide mission to discredit the African Freedom Fighters.

 

    Clive moves between times and countries with an ease that would become more common in his future works, and the various subplots are well developed and easy to follow. In Vixen 03, Clive shows the seedier side of Washington, D.C. with the introduction of. a corrupt politician who attempts to blackmail Pitt and Smith.

 

    The theme of governmental corruption is one Clive will continue to use in future novels.

 

    Now the hunt is on to find out that the plane's cargo was a poisonous gas called QD. Pitt traces the flight authorization to a retired Navy admiral, and Heidi Milligan, who appears in a future novel, is introduced.

 

    A confrontation with the Raffertys results in a shoot-out. Both Raffertys are killed, but not before Pitt is told where the warheads removed from the jet were sold. A plan is put into motion to locate the warheads.

 

    Once again, Cussler writes a story featuring high stakes.

 

    He utilizes biological weapons as a threat long before it became commonplace.

 

    The climax is pure Cussler. The battleship Iowa steams upriver to Washington, D.C. with Fawkes at the helm, determined to deliver his deadly cargo and discredit the African Freedom Fighters he believes murdered his family.

 

    The man-as-a-woman, or, more accurately here, woman-as-a-man, theme used in Iceberg shows up here as well. A shadowy spy we are led to believe is a man is found out after she is killed to be a woman.

 

    In the next-to-the-last section, Pitt travels to Africa and buries Fawkes. He then explains that he knows that Operation Wild Rose was an attempt to topple the current government of South Africa so that the defense minister could take over. De Vaal, the defense minister, is then killed. The novel ends with Rongelo Island, the last location in the world with any QD, being struck by a nuclear bomb that eradicates the last trace of the deadly poison.

 

 

Night Probe!

 

    Following the publication of Vixen 03, Clive started writing Night Probe! Unlike his normal schedule of publishing a new Pitt book every two years, Night Probe! didn't show up until 1981, three years after Vixen 03 went on sale. Part of the time lag was due to a switch in publishers. Clive had been having trouble with Viking for some time.

 

    The book tour for Vixen 03 was a farce, the promotion and marketing of the book almost nonexistent.

 

    Clive desperately wanted to change publishers, but book contracts specify that the current publisher has an option on the next book created by the author.

 

    This practice is still widespread in the publishing business. For publishers, it protects them if a writer's works suddenly become hot.

 

    For writers, it locks them into a first right of refusal on their next work.

 

    To fulfill his obligation, Clive submitted a book on advertising he had written, I Went to Denver but It Was Closed. It was promptly rejected.

 

    Cussler was now free to change publishers. Clive is rather unique as a writer. Each of his books has outsold the one before. In addition, each has easily paid back the advance and made his publishers money.

 

    This is less frequent than one might believe. Look at the advances paid to people like Dan Quayle. Did they really sell enough copies of their books to justify the millions paid in advance money?

 

    Landing at Bantam, a paperback house that wanted to branch out in hardcover, Night Probe! was published in hardcover in 1981, followed a year later by the paperback edition. For his new publisher, Clive delivered what he and others consider his best plot.

 

    As the book begins in the past, we learn that copies of a treaty between the United States and Great Britain have been lost almost simultaneously in a pair of freak accidents. One copy is lost when a ship sinks, one when a train plunges into a river.

 

    The book is timely. The United States is in the midst of an energy crisis, as it was in 1981, and Canada controls most of the hydroelectric power feeding the Eastern Seaboard. We learn that the treaty concerns Great Britain, in the midst of a financial crisis just before World War I, selling Canada to the United States.

 

    Beautifully sub plotted with a group of Canadian separatists, a British secret agent modeled after James Bond and a mystery train that appears like a wraith in the night, the novel moves with a smooth style. It is action-adventure at its best. Heidi Milligan, who was first introduced in Vixen 03, is a Pitt love interest who falls for Brian Shaw, the British secret agent. Giordino has a large part, and Sandecker, Gunn and most of the other continuing characters appear. The primary villain, Foss Gly, who appears in a later Pitt novel, is described in detail.

 

    There are plenty of underwater scenes for the diehard Pitt fan. And the tools NUMA uses to locate shipwrecks are beautifully detailed and explained. Pitt pursues his hobby of collecting old cars by attending an auction.

 

    The book has a definite time line. The treaty must be recovered by Pitt before the British get their hands on it, and the president of the United States is facing national insolvency. In the end, Pitt recovers the treaty and delivers it to the president just in time. The president then announces the formation of the United States of Canada.

 

    The novel ends with Pitt delivering Milligan to Shaw, who is suspected of being James Bond.

 

 

Deep Six

 

    Clive followed the success of Night Probe! with Deep Six. It was his first effort for his new publisher Simon & Schuster and built upon his multiple-subplot formula which he would use with increasing frequency in the years ahead. Published in hardcover in 1984 and followed the next year by the paperback edition published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, the book works on various levels. In addition, it begins the Cussler tradition of having maps and artwork inside the book. Deep Six definitely should be read by the Dirk Pitt fan if only for one reason: it features one of the single best Dirk Pitt scenes ever written.

 

    When one of the villains of the novel, Lee Tong, makes his escape in a towboat pushing a barge, Pitt gives chase in the Mississippi paddle-wheel steamer Stonewall Jackson. The scene is brilliantly written.

 

    A few years ago, Clive was asked how he developed the idea. He claimed that, as is often the case, he hadn't planned the scene. He usually has the germ of the plot-usually the beginning and often the end but just begins writing the body of the book and unfolding the story in his head as he progresses. The Stonewall Jackson scene was different, however. Stuck without a climactic event near the end of the book, he was lying in bed one night when the scene unfolded in his mind in 3-D Technicolor. He raced to the computer and got the scene on paper before it faded.

 

    Be glad he did.

 

    The novel begins once again in the past, 1966 to be exact, when a meek bank teller named Arta Casilighio robs the bank where she is employed, then escapes on the cargo ship San Marino. It seems she has gotten away with the crime until she realizes that her evening drink has been drugged. Through a haze, she watches as the crew of the San Marino are bound and tossed overboard. Moments later, Arta joins them at the bottom of the ocean.

 

    In Chapter One, the Coast Guard vessel Catawaba comes across a drifting crab boat in the Gulf of Alaska. When a boarding party, including a doctor, is sent aboard the crabber, they find the crew dead. Two of the boarding party quickly succumb, while the doctor radios back to the Catawaba that he, too, is being affected by whatever is on board. He orders the crabber quarantined, then, with his dying breaths, explains the symptoms he is feeling.

 

    Next, we learn that the president will be taking a cruise on the presidential yacht Eagle with a congressional leader, the speaker of the House and the vice president. Later that night, the Eagle and all aboard disappear, setting the conflict into motion.

 

    An evil Asian shipping magnate, Min Bougainville, has formed a plan with the Russians to kidnap the president and implant a mind-control microchip in his brain. In researching the ship containing the nerve gas, Pitt traces it back to Bougainville.

 

    Clive introduces the father of the bank teller as a private detective, Sal Casio, who seems written straight out of a Mickey Spillane novel.

 

    Loren Smith appears once again, and the interplay between Pitt and Giordino is further developed.

 

    The element of time is again used to great effect, as is the idea of corrupt politicians. Pitt must rescue the vice president and have him sworn into office before the corrupt speaker of the House, Alan Moran, can be sworn in as president.

 

    The book ends with Casio and Pitt visiting the Bougainville Maritime offices. They confront Min Bougainville, who activates a laser that cuts Casio and kills him. Pitt rolls Min in her wheelchair to an elevator and pushes her down the shaft.

 

 

Cyclops

 

    Cyclops was Clive's second effort for Simon & Schuster, which he remains with to this day. Published in hardcover in 1986 and paperback by Pocket Books in December of the same year, Cyclops spent fourteen weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.

 

    Here, the tradition Clive started in Deep Six is continued: the insertion of excellent artwork and maps designed to help the reader follow the plot. Clive also begins this novel in the past-a tradition he began with Raise the Titanic!-with the sinking of a United States Navy collier Cyclops.

 

    The reader is then taken to the present day in Florida, where a rich industrialist, Raymond LeBaron, takes off in a blimp, never to return.

 

    Very early on, the conflict is locked in place. The president is golfing when he learns that a group of scientists have built and developed a moon colony. Pitt appears on vacation in Florida and is involved in a sailboard race when the missing blimp reappears.

 

    A missing treasure is introduced, a theme Clive will continue to use in future novels, and a race is on to find the people who had been on the blimp when it took off from Florida. The Russians enter the picture early. They develop information about the moon colony and decide to send a manned space flight to the moon with the intent of engaging in a war to claim the moon for themselves. And an interesting subplot concerning Cuba is developed.

 

    The trio of plot lines-the moon colony, the missing blimp and possible treasure, the Cuba angle-weave together as the novel progresses. As in Raise the Titanic! Clive has an older lady who helps Pitt understand the past. In Raise the Titanic! it was the widow of Joshua Hays Brewster; in Cyclops, she's the widow of Hans Kronberg, the former partner of Raymond LeBaron, who sheds light on the missing treasure, named LaDorada.

 

    Cussler places Pitt in a variety of interesting scenes.

 

    In one, he shows his scorn for pomp and circumstance by arriving unannounced at an exclusive party. This allows one of Pitt's cars to be showcased, as well as showing that Pitt, while nice most of the time, does not suffer fools gladly.

 

    For love interests, we have Jessie LeBaron, the wife of the missing industrialist, whom Pitt beds in a drain 107 age pipe in Cuba, an unusual twist here, as Jessie is in her fifties and a good fifteen years older than Pitt.

 

    Foss Gly-the villain of Night Probe!-returns as a torturer. This, however, is his last visit. Pitt kills him with a thumb to the eye and into the brain. Cyclops marks the second time Hiram Yaeger appears, the first having been a brief appearance in Deep Six that proved successful. The tight time line again is used with the Russian cosmonauts due on the moon as well as the plot to explode a series of ship-hidden bombs in Havana Harbor.

 

    Pitt acquires one of his strangest prizes in his collection in Cyclops, a cast-iron bathtub with an outboard motor aboard with which he escapes from Cuba.

 

    When the battle on the moon is played out, another conflict is created.

 

    The Russians attempt to divert to Cuba the space shuttle that is carrying the moon colonists back to earth. They are narrowly foiled in their efforts.

 

    Pitt, back on Cuban soil, attempts to warn Fidel Castro of the plot to explode Havana in an attempt to discredit the United States. He moves the ships carrying the explosives a distance from Havana before they explode, but it appears Pitt is lost for good. He appears, of course, battered but alive. At the end of the novel, Pitt solves the puzzle of the location of the La Dorada treasure and salvages the statues and treasure for display in a museum.

 

 

Treasure

 

    Published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster in 1987 and in paperback the following year by Pocket Books, 108

 

    Treasure is the first Pitt novel to crack the five-hundred page barrier.

 

    From Treasure to the present day, no Pitt book has run shorter in length than five hundred pages. It also begins a now-defunct Cussler tradition of giving measurements in metric. Clive finally quit the tradition in Shock Wave, much to the delight of his U.S. readers.

 

    Once again, we have a missing treasure-in this case, the trove of information contained in the Alexandria Library. But, unlike in Cyclops, here the treasure is the main plot in the story.

 

    The prelude is a Cussler tour-deforce, imaginative, written with a detail most writers can never achieve, yet extremely interesting. We are immediately treated to a dose of archaeology as well as a subplot about a scheme to kill the secretary-general of the United Nations, Han Kamil, a character who will reappear in future novels.

 

    The Russians are not featured in the book. Instead, for villains we have an almost mythical messiah who wants to return Mexico to the time of the Aztecs and is named Topiltzin. Across the ocean in Egypt, his equally powerful counterpart, named Yazid, wants to develop a fundamentalist Islamic state. We learn as the novel progresses that the pair are actually brothers and part of an international crime family.

 

    For love interests, Pitt beds both Hah Kamil and Lily Sharp, an archaeologist. For classic cars and chase scenes, Clive writes an excellent chapter featuring his L-29 Cord and a chase that culminates on a Colorado ski slope. The interplay between Pitt and Giordino is used to great effect. Their sarcastic banter in the face of grave danger is used throughout the novel.

 

    Pitt's father, Senator George Pitt of California, 109 spends a fair amount of time in the story. While he appeared in previous works, Treasure marks Senator Pitt's longest appearance before or since. As the story unfolds, a summit of nations is convened in Uruguay, and a plot to hijack the cruise ship the world leaders are aboard is developed.

 

    At the same time, Yaeger is hard at work attempting to find the location where the Alexandria Library was hidden. The president feels that if the library holds ancient maps of mineral and oil deposits, it might be used to locate a massive oil deposit in Israel-thus solving a multitude of the region's problems.

 

    Once Pitt solves the riddle of what happened to the cruise ship full of politicians, named the Lady Flamborough, a U.S. operation is launched to recover the ship and free the hostages. Once the hostages are freed, Pitt sets off for Texas, where NUMA now believes the Alexandria Library is buried.

 

    Before the Alexandria Library can be excavated, however, the Mexican messiah, Topiltzin, launches a wave of his Mexican followers across the Rio Grande into Texas. His goal is to steal the library and profit from the information.

 

    With Yazid slain by the disgruntled terrorist he had hired to kill Kamil, all that is left is for Topiltzin to meet his end. He is blown to bits when one of the hills near the location of the Alexandria Library is exploded as a decoy.

 

    In the final chapter, the president visits the site in Texas where the Alexandria Library is being excavated and catalogued. Pitt is already talking of a future adventure, the search for the golden city of El Dorado.

 

 

Dragon

 

    In 1990, Simon & Schuster published the hardcover edition of the tenth Dirk Pitt adventure-Dragon.

 

    This was followed in 1991 with the paperback edition, once again published by Pocket Books. It featured the rich illustrations that were becoming a Cussler trademark. In this story, a United States Air Force cargo plane has a dangerous cargo aboard. The prelude features the flight of a plane called Dennings' Demons as it attempts to deliver a payload over Japan.

 

    Dragon then concentrates on a Japanese cargo ship that explodes into pieces, a submersible containing a beautiful underwater photographer we later learn is a U.S. intelligence agent named Stacy Fox.

 

    When the submersible is damaged by the cargo ship explosion, Pitt rescues the crew, then is forced to order the evacuation of Soggy Acres, a secret underwater installation that was built for mining which is suffering from underwater earthquakes. In the Philippines, a treasure cave from ' World War II thought to contain Yamashita's Gold is excavated, only to reveal the Japanese have returned and removed the treasure.

 

    At the same time, Pitt is inside a deep-sea mining vehicle named Big John. After being buried in the shocks from the earthquakes, he escapes and drives Big John toward a high point in the ocean and is rescued by Giordino in a submersible.

 

    The reader is now introduced to the villain, Hideki Suma. Suma has devised a plan to place atomic bombs smuggled inside Japanese cars throughout the world in an effort to achieve worldwide domination.

 

    Loren Smith returns, along with a senator from New Mexico named Mike Diaz. Both favor sanctions against Japanese investment in the United States as well as embargoes on imported Japanese products, and Suma later kidnaps both. For Pitt love interests, we have both Fox and Smith.

 

    A task force is created to find and neutralize the car bombs. Pitt attends a classic car race, where he races his creator, Clive Cussler.

 

    Clive wrote the scene as much as a farce as anything, believing that the editors would ask him to remove it. When they didn't and Clive found out the readers enjoyed seeing the author inside the novel, the scene where Pitt meets Cussler has become a staple of the series. At the race, Smith is kidnapped.

 

    A subplot evolves when a farmer in Germany locates an underground Nazi aircraft hangar. Pitt travels to Germany and dives on the underground aircraft hangar and finds the planes and a trove of artwork stolen by the Nazis.

 

    One of the paintings shows the island where Edo City, Suma's nuclear detonation center, is located. A plot is hatched to attack the installation, free Diaz and Smith and neutralize Suma's control center.

 

    Next, Clive writes a scene reminiscent of The Most Dangerous Game, the classic story of a hunter whose prey is humans. Ingeniously, Pitt foils the hunter. With the freed hostages and a kidnapped Suma, he makes his way to a U.S. Navy ship. When the attack on Edo City is unsuccessful, Pitt volunteers for a suicide mission. Dropped from the air in a deep-sea mining vehicle, he takes the warhead from the wreck of Dennings' Demons, carries it to a fault line that runs to Edo City, rigs it to detonate, then tries to escape.

 

    The book ends with an obituary for Dirk Pitt and a tearful lunch with the two women in the book who had shared his love, Stacy Fox and Loren Smith. The final scene has Pitt in the deep-sea mining vehicle reappearing on the shores of a remote island in the South Pacific.

 

 

Sahara

 

    Once again, Clive makes the stakes high with a tale set in Africa. In Sahara, published in 1992 in hardcover and July 1993 in paperback by Pocket Books, the menace is an environmental catastrophe that could wipe out all life in the ocean and perhaps even on land.

 

    Clive begins the novel in the past. Near the end of the Civil War, a Confederate ironclad named the Texas leaves Richmond carrying part of the Confederate treasury and the kidnapped Union president, Abraham Lincoln. Next, we have a pioneer female aviator, Kitty Mannock, who crashes her plane in Africa. Her disappearance remains one of aviation's great mysteries.

 

    Traveling to the current time, a tourist safari in Africa is attacked by villagers who we later learn have been exposed to chemicals in their water that make them mad. The entire group of tourists is killed and cannabalized. Pitt's love interest, Eva Rojas, is a scientist with the World Health Organization who is searching for the source of toxic poison in Africa. Pitt rescues her from an attempted rape and murder by killing the attackers.

 

    Sandecker then assigns Pitt, Giordino and Gunn to find the source of the poisons. To aid them in their task, they are given the use of a high-tech boat named the Calliope and sent up the Niger River.

 

    We learn that the villains of the novel, Yves Massarde, a French industrialist, and Zateb Kazim, an evil general and the true head of the country of Mali, are partners in a hazardous-waste treatment facility in the Sahara Desert. On the Calliope, Gunn escapes with the water samples to the airport in Mali, while Pitt and Giordino rig the Calliope to explode and swim to Massarde's houseboat, where they are captured.

 

    Next, the UN World Health Organization scientists assigned to locate the poisons are captured and taken to a gold mine named Tebezza. At Tebezza, the gold is mined by convicts and slaves. Pitt and Giordino escape from Massarde's houseboat by stealing a helicopter, then ditching the helicopter in the Niger River near a town named Bourem.

 

    There they steal Kazim's classic car and take off into the desert.

 

    Clive makes his appearance as a prospector named "The Kid," who is searching for the Texas, which he believes is hidden somewhere in the desert. After that, Pitt and Giordmo make their way to Massarde's hazardous-waste facility, named Fort Foureau, where they are captured.

 

    After Masarde questions them, they are banished to Tebezza. They escape Tebezza, vowing to return and save the others, and set off across the desert on foot. Near death from dehydration, they stumble upon the wreckage of Mannock's plane and fashion a land yacht they ride until they are rescued by a truck driver who gives them a ride to the nearest town.

 

    Returning with a special UN force, Pitt liberates Tebezza. Leaving Tebezza, Pitt and Giordino make their way to Fort Foureau and an old French Foreign Legion outpost. There they fight off Massarde's security forces until Giordino returns with a U.S. Special Forces team. Kazim is killed in the fight. After Fort Fourcau is secured, Massarde is staked out in the desert sun and in a fit of thirst consumes poisonous water.

 

    He later dies a horrible death. In the end, Pitt returns and leads a crash team to Mannock's plane. Then, along with Giordino and Perhnutter, Pitt locates the Texas. The novel ends with an explanation that the assassination of Lincoln was a hoax. Pitt travels to California to locate Eva Rojas and take her away for a romantic trip to Mexico.

 

 

Inca Gold

 

    Another effort for Simon & Schuster, Inca Gold was introduced in hardcover in 1994 and paperback in March 1995. Starting with Dragon, the back book jackets of the hardcovers feature full-page four-color photographs of Clive with one of Pitt's cars. In the case of Inca Gold, the photograph is of Pitt's 1936 Pierce-Arrow with a matching Travelodge travel trailer.

 

    Clive is still using the metric system of measurement, with most measurements converted to English in the novel.

 

    The plot is different from most Pitt novels. Instead of an event that might affect the world, or Russian vs. American <<mtngue>>, we have a tale of artifact smuggling.

 

    Starting with an Inca vessel burying a treasure in 1578 in an undisclosed location, Clive follows with a pirate chapter featuring Sir Francis Drake and a tsunami wave that carries a ship far inland.

 

    Next, a university archaeological team is trapped in a limestone sinkhole. Pitt and Giordino appear to launch a rescue effort. They succeed in the rescue, but when the archaeologists, including Shannon Kelsey, one of Pitt's love interests, and Giordino are taken prisoners by rebels, Pitt is left to claw his way out.

 

    Free from the sinkhole, Pitt finds the rotor blade of his helicopter shattered and sets off tracking the rebels and their prisoners on foot.

 

    After being taken to a stone fortress in the mountain by one of the villains, Tupac Amaru, the hostages are rescued by Pitt and escape in a helicopter owned by the rebels. Making its way out to sea with the idea of landing on a NUMA research ship offshore, Pitt's helicopter is attacked by a Peruvian military chopper which they fend off.

 

    St. Julien Perlmutter has a large role in Inca Gold.

 

    He helps Pitt in his search to find Drake's vessel, as well as advising him on artifact smuggling.

 

    The primary villains of the tale, the Zolar family, are introduced and their profiteering from stolen historical artifacts explored. Hiram Yaeger is featured, using the NUMA computer center to steer Pitt and Giordino to locating the Conception, the ship carried away in the tidal wave.

 

    Using a helicopter-mounted magnetometer, Pitt is successful in finding the Conception and locating a box that contains the Drake Quipu, a series of ancient Inca records recorded on knotted ropes. Yaeger, using his computer, deciphers the Drake Quipu and discovers that the lost treasure of Huascar is probably buried in northern Mexico. The chase is on to locate the treasure before the Zolars.

 

    As a cover for searching for the location of Huas 116 car's treasure, Pitt and Loren Smith, Pitt's other love interest in the book, set off on a cross-country auto tour aboard Pitt's Pierce-Arrow. They stumble upon the Box Car Cafe, owned by a former prospector named Cussler. As usual, Pitt forgets the name when he tries to recall it.

 

    Pitt and Giordino are pitted against the Zolars as they search for Huascar's treasure. They travel an underground river in a small Hovercraft to rescue Gunn and Smith. A tribe of Indians seeking the return of their ceremonial artifacts help Pitt dispatch the Zolars' men. In the end, the treasure is saved, and the river becomes a major benefit to the people living in the desert.

 

    Inca Gold is a slight departure from the normal Cussler style. Instead of the dead-run pace of most of the Pitt novels, Inca Gold delves into history, and more of the book than usual is written as narrative.

 

 

Shock Wave

 

    Shock Wave was published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster in 1996, with the Pocket Book paperback edition following in December of the same year. After the break in tension in Inca Gold, Clive returns with a tale of high stakes, with an evil mining family intent on destroying sea life and maybe the Hawaiian Islands.

 

    Shock Wave begins with a ship of convicts lost in a storm. After fierce fighting and the need to abandon the ship on a small raft, few of the convicts and crew survive. The few who do set up a colony on a remote island they later find is littered with diamonds, forming the basis of a vast fortune.

 

    In the current day, a group of tourists is visiting an island off Antarctica when a mysterious plague hits that kills land and sea animals and several of the tourists. Pitt's love interest, Maeve Fletcher, is one of the tourists' guides. Pitt arrives on the island by helicopter and helps the tourists to safety. He then saves their cruise ship from crashing into a rocky shoreline.

 

    The evil Dorsett family is introduced-Deirdre and her rotten, evil sister Boudicca, led by their father, Arthur Dorsett. The only good person in the family is Maeve Fletcher, who uses her great-great-great grandmother's last name. Perlmutter plays an important role, explaining the history of the Dorsett clan to Pitt.

 

    Pitt, in an effort to trace the cause of marine-life deaths, travels to western Canada to inspect one of Dorsett's mines. He is introduced to a mining engineer named Cussler, who explains how sound waves are being used to mine diamonds. Cussler explains that the waves travel through water and converge on different locations, wreaking havoc. We now know the cause of the worldwide devastation.

 

    Pitt, Giordino and Maeve hatch a plan to rescue her twin boys, who have been kidnapped by her father.

 

    Unfortunately, they are captured in New Zealand and taken aboard the Dorsett yacht, from which they are set adrift in a small, inflatable boat to die in the ocean.

 

    Luckily, they find the wreck of a sailboat on an island, fashion a larger wind-powered craft and make their way toward civilization.

 

    We learn that the acoustic waves created by Dorsett's operation will converge on Hawaii and wipe it off the map if they are not stopped.

 

    Meanwhile, Arthur Dorsett is out to corner the market in colored stones. He plans to flood the market with diamonds to drive the price down to almost nothing, making colored stones more valuable.

 

    A plan is developed to reflect Dorsett's acoustic waves. A giant parabolic dish will be lowered in the ocean from the deck of the Howard Hughes-designed ship Glomar Explorer. Still at sea in their fabricated craft, Pitt, Giordino and Fletcher finally reach Gladiator Island, home of the Dorsett clan.

 

    The plan to divert the acoustic waves is successful, but the reflection sends the sound beam directly at Gladiator island. Sandecker warns Pitt, but he doesn't have time to escape. When the wave hits, the volcanoes erupt in a firestorm of ash and lava. Pitt kills Arthur and Deirdre Dorsett, while Giordino eliminates Boudicca. In a plot twist Clive has used before, we learn Boudicca is actually a man dressed and living as a woman.

 

    Giordino escapes by helicopter with Maeve's twin sons, but with no more room on the helicopter, Pitt and Maeve are forced to flee in the Dorsett yacht.

 

    During a shower Of lava and ash, Pitt manages to steer the yacht into the ocean, but not before Maeve dies in his arms. Loren Smith shows up at Pitt's apartment after he is rescued, but Dirk asks her just to leave him alone.

 

 

Flood Tide

 

    The fourteenth Dirk Pitt novel was published in hardcover in 1997 by Simon & Schuster and one can safely assume in paperback by Pocket Books in 1998. Flood Tide follows Cussler tradition and begins in the past.

 

    A Chinese cargo ship loaded with priceless artwork sails into an intense storm that sinks her. Only two people survive, and they wash up on an unknown shore.

 

    We next meet an Immigration and Naturalization officer, Julia Lee, who serves as Pitt's love interest.

 

    Lee is aboard a Chinese cargo ship loaded with illegal immigrants seeking a new life in the United States.

 

    Sentenced to die, she is sent to a lake in Washington State, where those too sick to become slaves are killed.

 

    Pitt arrives on a vacation in Washington, attempting to recuperate from the thrashing he suffered in Shock Wave. Curious about strange affairs on the lake, he investigates the home of a rich industrialist named Qin Shang. Videotaping the bottom of the lake, he finds it littered with dead bodies and determines that Shang's lake retreat is nothing more than a human smuggling operation.

 

    Rescuing a group of immigrants who are sentenced to die in the lake, he helps them escape in an old Cris-Craft boat while being pursued by Shang's security guards. We learn that Shang's operation is the front for a Chinese-government-approved plan to reduce population. And we learn that the S.S. United States, a powerful cruise ship retired in the early 1960s, is being refitted in a shipyard near Hong Kong. In addition, Shang has built a huge cargo port named Sungari in a bayou in Louisiana.

 

    Pitt and Giordino are ordered to search the S.S. United States, and they enlist the help of a covert corporation manned by ex-intelligence operatives. After examining the cruise ship, they are attacked by a Chinese destroyer and manage to sink the aggressor.

 

    Pitt returns home, and upon entering his aircraft hangar/home, he is attacked by assassins hired by Shang. He manages to kill the attackers. Later, with Lee as his escort, he attends a party hosted by Shang in Maryland. After visiting Perlmutter, Pitt and Lee are again chased by assassins, and he escapes in his 1929 Duesenberg.

 

    Next, Pitt decides to investigate Sungari with Giordino. We learn that the S.S. United States will be traveling up the Mississippi River, where it will be moored at New Orleans to be used as a floating casino.

 

    NUMA now decides that Sungari is part of Shang's plan to divert the Mississippi River into the Atchafalaya River by blowing a bridge atop the Mississippi's levee and channeling the water into a canal he has built. Shang's plan is to have the S.S. United States bury her hull crossways in the river to form a dam.

 

    The S.S. United States is attacked by National Guard forces lining the river but continues upstream. Pitt and Giordino land on the ship from hang gliders. The explosives ignite and start the flood, but Pitt manages to take control of the S.S. United States and drives the ship into the levee to plug the opening.

 

    Pitt next decides to locate the Chinese cargo ship that was lost at the start of the novel. Perlmutter determines the ship sank in Lake Michigan. Finding the survivors from the wreck, Pitt pinpoints the area and then mounts a salvage operation and removes the priceless artwork. Pitt has asked Perlmutter to leak a report to Shang that the wreck has been found. When Shang finds out, he races to Lake Michigan with the hopes of recovering the already-salvaged treasures himself.

 

    In a fight on the ocean bottom, Pitt kills Shang. At the end, the treasure is displayed in a museum.

 

 

Nonfiction

 

 

The Sea Hunters

 

    In 1996, Clive branched out in nonfiction with The Sea Hunters.

 

    Published by Simon & Schuster in hardcover and followed in 1997 by a Pocket Books paperback, the book was an unexpected success. It reached number five on the New York Times best-seller list in hardcover, and the introduction of the paperback saw the book rise to number one on the Times list, giving Clive his first time at the top slot.

 

    Co-written with Craig Dirgo, the book details the exploits of Clive's nonprofit foundation NUMA, which is named after the organization in the Pitt novels.

 

    When the idea for a book about shipwrecks was presented to Simon & Schuster, the publisher was less than enthralled. Peter Lampack, Clive's agent, distinctly remembers one editor glancing out the window during the presentation as if he was distracted-and totally disinterested.

 

    Knowing that most historical books are about as interesting to read as the back of a cereal box, the authors set out to create a book with accurate historical facts that read like a novel. The history of the ships and their battles remained true to the facts but was enhanced with dialogue. The actual search for the vessel was written by Clive in first person to give the reader an insight into the process that goes on when a NUMA search is launched.

 

    An excellent introduction gives the reader insight into Clive and his history as well as the formation of NUMA and its role in historic marine search and discovery.

 

    The book features nine of the searches NUMA has undertaken. Beginning with the steamship Lexington, which burned and sank in Long Island Sound, the events surrounding the disaster are explored and the aftermath chronicled.

 

    The Republic of Texas Navy ship Zavala is featured next, followed by a chapter about the U.S.S. Cumberland and the Confederate raider C.S.S. Florida. The fourth section details the strange life of the C.S.S. Arkansas, a Confederate ironclad whose career was short but exciting.

 

    Featured next is the U.S.S. Carondelet, a Union ironclad built for the war to control western rivers.

 

    Section Six chronicles the interesting tale of the C.S.S. Hunley, the first submarine to sink a ship in battle. The chapter proved popular with readers, many of whom were unaware that submarines had even been used in the Civil War.

 

    In a change of pace, Section Seven is about a disaster and a search that take place on land. "The Lost Locomotive of Kiowa Creek" is about a train that plunged into a river in a flood, and the search to find the truth about what happened to the locomotive took more turns than a mountain road.

 

    For Section Eight, the book travels to Europe and chronicles wrecks from World War I in an expedition that NUMA launched in 1984. Section Nine is the tale of an event from World War II largely ignored by history. The tragedy of the sinking of the Leopoldville and the subsequent rescue efforts could be a book in itself.

 

    Featuring a middle section of photographs and richly drawn maps along with a listing of ships NUMA has located over the years, The Sea Hunters gives the Cussler fan both insight into the man behind Dirk Pitt and a rich appreciation for the old adage that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.