Plague Ship
"Cussler writes rip-roaring, high octane novels of derring do which make the heart pump and the pulse race."
Synopsis:
A Nazi officer has discovered an amazing relic hidden in a Norwegian glacier during the Second World War. Some sixty years later a maniacal leader of a modern day cult uses this discovery to attempt to shape history.
A cruise ship's passengers and crew are all struck down with a sudden sickness which takes the lives of everyone on board except for sick bay patient Jannike Dahl. The crew of the ship Oregon come to her rescue and lift her from the ship as charges detonate to scuttle the ship.
The crew of the Oregon are no ordinary ships crew. They are a band of highly equipped mercenaries who pull off the dirty jobs that governments cannot be seen to go near. The leader of the mercenaries, Juan Cabrillo, leads his team into an investigation of the fatal virus which claimed the lives of all other on board the stricken ship. This investigation pits them against the modern cult of Responsivists as they battle to prevent the cult changing the future.
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Review:
Another thoroughbred from Cussler's stable of bestsellers sees the Oregon Files team fight to preserve mankind from a zealot's ideal of future society. Led by Cabrillo and his entourage the novel gathers the usual frantic pace you would expect from any of Clive Cussler's books. He does not attempt to write touchy-feely novels which are more about the characters emotions rather than the events surrounding them. Cussler writes rip-roaring, high octane novels of derring do which make the heart pump and the pulse race. Having first read a Clive Cussler novel some 20 plus years ago I have followed his career throughout the Dirk Pitt series of novels until he retired Pitt from the action adventures. This is the first of his books from the Oregon files or the NUMA files that I have read and I am left asking myself why I stopped reading Clive Cussler? The simple answer would be that I have grown up and discovered many other authors to enjoy but this is not the whole answer. I suspect that after reading so many of his novels they became a little stale with Pitt constantly saving the world from doom. The Plague Ship addresses the issue of repetition by having a larger cast of characters, each with special training which lends their accomplishments the credibility of a team effort rather than having a massively larger than life character carrying the whole story.