His novels entice you in but ultimately rather disappoint (Clive Cussler in general)

Member Name: darren55

Product:	Clive Cussler in general
Date:	27/10/09 (17 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: exciting premises and cliffhangers

Disadvantages: almost cartoon like violence

Clive Cussler is an American adventure writer whose main character is a rugged all-american hero Dirk Pitt. Cussler writes books which are nautically based and have a historical element through out.

Cusslers novels are clever in some ways but ultimately for me rather leave you flat by the end, the books go through a now very established system.

There is nearly always a flashback to events set some time in the disant past, these are usually associated with famous events in the past. These events tend to be water based and have featured such things as the Titanic, Atlantis, Pearl Harbour etc etc. The event usually leaves the characters dead and the story buried in some kind of insignificant event at the time of the prelude.

Jump forward to the modern day and we are introduced to Dirk Pitt, a Indiana Jones/James Bond adventurer who works for the National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA), an American agency patrolling the oceans. The agency is well funded and allows Dirk to investigate anything interesting in the world, along the way he encounters beautiful women and finds himself in danger through his need to discover new things. He's assisited by an American/Italian Al Giordino, who to be honest is a total pastiche of all things italian i.e., he loves food, wine, women, cigars and mama. There are also Admiral Sandecker who heads the agency until he becomes American Vice President and Haram a computer expert.

So NUMA under Sandecker, fronted by Dirk are sent to investigate anything happening on the oceans. There they inevitable encounter danger, and theres always some kind of corrupt businessman whose actions are going to cause ocean armageddon.

The story draws you in with the promise of exciting stories about such things as the Titanic, Lusitiania, Vikings in America, Atlantis, etc etc and the first 100 pages tend to be exciting and gets you into the story. Then the stories slowly start to annoy you on a more cerebral level, basically all the people on the side of Dirk are good-looking, honest, full of integrity and people you'd like next to you in the trenches and the enemies are evil, back stabbing, corrupt, decadent and totally deserving your contempt.

Cussler then accelerates the story using the technique of the very short chapters, some can be only 2 pages long. This technique has been picked up by Dan Brown and his ilk but to be fair to Cussler he's been writing since the seventies. The story quickly evolves into something more like a Tom Clancy novel, there are set battles, which are increasingly incredible and in fact bairly credible. The baddies of course get their commupence but most of the time i get to the last 100 pages of his novels and almost skim read because the events depicted are so implausibe and so untenable that they are almost cartoon like in their depiction of violence. You know Dirk and his friends will come through but there isn't a hint of the terse writting of a Fleming or a Higgins displayed.

The bad guys always die, they are dispatched with some kind of awful pun by Dirk which is like James Bond would say if he'd had a heavy night and felt a bit green that day.

Cussler also writes about a character called Kurt Austin but I find him a carbon copy of Dirk Pitt so the same issues apply.

Ultimately his novels are readable but none of the stories stay in the memory longer than it takes to turn the last page over.

n.b. You can tell in his most famous novel "Raise the Titanic" that he wrote the novel before the ship was re-found because Dirk raises the whole ship in one piece when in fact we know it split in two before sinking.

Summary: Good but not great writer in my opinion