This is #15 (though I found a list in which it was #14) in the long (27) line of Cussler books featuring Dirk Pitt, Special Projects Director at the (fictional) National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) and globe-trotting superhero. His adventures – and Cussler’s plots – stretch credulity but are great fun to read. In this one Pitt saves the world from a cataclysm planned by descendants of Third Reich survivors, the intent being to destroy everything so the world can be recreated as the Fourth Reich. The mechanism for inducing the cataclysm is to detach the entire Ross Ice Shelf from Antarctica, thereby causing a tectonic shift, generating massive tidal waves and disrupting the world’s weather for decades while the Fourth Reich plotters ride out the havoc in four gargantuan ships – each a mile long.
As I said, the plots stretch credulity.
There are dangers and attempts on his life throughout the book but in the final battle he and his sidekick, Al Giordino, take on a crack security force of several hundred, while driving a huge vehicle built in 1940 for exploring the Antarctic, armed only with small arms. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that they defeat the enemy force and save the world.
Ridiculous. And fun.
7 out of 10.