A Cussler That Doesn’t Suck!

I just finished  Arctic Drift,  a Dirk Pitt adventure by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Cussler (and various co-writers) has written a series  of adventure novels featuring Dirk Pitt, his loyal sidekick, Al Giordano, and their fictitious US Government National Underwater & Marine Agency (NUMA). The novels are totally formulaic, and always start with some historical occurrence (usually a tragedy) that will impact the present day mystery, which always involves a megalomaniacal enemy bent on world domination. During the novel, one of Pitt’s classic cars will be more or less destroyed when the bad guy tries to kill him and the two main characters will inevitably be isolated from their companions and, usually, captured by bad guys. They always somehow get the upper hand, free themselves and are fighting the bad guys to a standstill, just as help arrives to wrap everything up with the forces of truth and justice prevailing. Oh, and Cussler always appears as a character in the book sometimes as minor encounter, but in later books, as a sort of deus ex machine who provides the good guys with some vital help of clue. They are quick, engaging, reads and a nice way to kill a few hours even if they aren’t great (or even good) literature.

This book was no different, the historical tragedy was Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage, and the megalomaniac was trying to corner the worlds supply of Ruthenium to prevent its use a catalyst in the conversion of CO2 into O2 and H2. This book has all the familiar elements, and follows the script more or less exactly. If you like Dirk Pitt, you’ll like this one. If like Messieurs Powers and Hadley you don’t like Cussler, you definitely won’t like this one!

84 for the year.

A New Conroy

Just finished Pat Conroy’s long awaited new book, South of Broad. This is fairly standard late Conroy, telling a story of suicide and mental illness with a little violence thrown in, against a back drop of Charleston, South Carolina. Although I can’t claim this is his best work (That would be either The Great Santini or Prince of Tides), it is still an extremely readable and compelling book. Even mediocre Pat Conroy is better than most authors out there.

If you haven’t yet read a Pat Conroy novel, he is a sort of Southern Gothic writer, with a fantastic command of language. His books explore the dynamics of dysfunctional families.  Often families who were traumatized by violence and/or rape.  All of his works are set, either wholly or partially in the South Carolina low-country.

If you haven’t read any Conroy you owe it to yourself to at least try one, and  this is as good a place as any to start. Once you start your first Conroy novel, you’ll probably either fling it away in disgust after the first couple of chapters, or you’ll be hooked and have to read all of them. I’ve read all of them. In fact, I’m beginning to feel the need to go back and reread some of them. Stay tuned.

83 for the year

Two that sucked!

I finished two books this week, and I’m afraid that both of them were pretty bad. This is surprising, because they are both from authors I’ve read and enjoyed in the past.

First was Spartan Gold by Clive Cussler and Grant Blackwood. This is a new series from Cussler who is probably best known for his series of novels featuring Dirk Pitt and his sidekick Al Giordano. This series features a husband and wife team of treasure hunters, Sam and Remi Fargo. I should have known something was amiss when I saw the name of a co-writer on the cover. And if that weren’t enough, the very first page of the book, dated 1800, refers to Napoleon as the Emperor, a title he didn’t acquire until 3 years later.

I can only claim that I was suckered by the fly-leaf which described our heros discovery of a WWII Nazi U-Boat 30 miles up a river in North Carolina.

Folks, this book is just plain bad. The plot, which revolves around two pillars of solid gold that the Persian King Xerxes the Great stole from the treasury at Delphi is a mess. The book has Napoleon finding them while taking his Army across the Alps in 1800 and failing to recover the treasure during the next 14 years when he more or less singlehandedly ruled Europe. Instead he marked their location by designing an elaborate treasure map broken up and hidden in the labels of 12 bottles of wine. Which the Nazi’s somehow acquired and gave to U-Boat sailors on their way across the Atlantic on a suicidal midget sub mission.

Oh, and while they are unraveling the mystery, the heros are more or less constantly beset by some mixed breed Russian/Persian super-crook who is convinced he is Xerxes’ direct descendant.

The book is horrible. The characters are flat, the dialog is insipid, and the plotting is ludicrous. Overall just very, very bad, you should be happy that I read it and saved you a couple of hours of your life!

Next up was James Warner Bellah’s Civil War novel, The Valiant Virginians. The book covers the adventures of three boys, Roan Catlett, Forney Manigault and Davin Ancrum, who grew up together in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and all enlisted in the “Short Mountain Company” of Virginia Cavalry. The books starts with their enlistment in May 1861, and ends just about a year later, on the eve of the Seven Days battles.

This is a serviceable little war novel ruined by absolutely horrid use of dialect in the dialog as well as a “moonlight & magnolias”, Lost Cause, perspective, where all the “Southrons” are either refined and civilized gentlemen (if they’re officers), stalwart honest, upstanding yeomen (if they’re enlisted men) or happy, loyal and grateful servants, (if they are slaves). It reminded me of a novelization of one of D.S. Freeman’s historical works on Lee and his Army.

This is a shame, since Bellah is, to my mind, one of the great writers of men in combat. His stories of the “dirty-shirt blue” Cavalrymen on the western plains are masterpieces. Bellah also wrote either the story, the screenplay, or both for all three of John Ford’s famous “Cavalry Trilogy” films; Ft Apache, Shoe Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. Anyway, I simply can’t recommend this, its too bad because he really is a great writer.

82 for the year.