327 AD - A Roman galley on an important mission is ambushed by pirates. With the crew dead or dying the galley limps away and it, and the precious cargo, is never seen again.
1916 - A German U-Boat watches in astonishment as a British cruiser explodes for no apparent reason.
Present day - While on a surveying assignment in the Eastern Mediterranean Dirk Pitt and Al Giordano discover an Ottoman shipwreck and end up on a collision course with a crazed brother and sister bent on bringing terror to the Middle East.
Clive Cussler has been one of my regular authors for years but of late he's been sticking to a formula and it shows.
Historical artefact gone missing - check
Dirk - or Kurt Austin, or the crew of the Oregon - stumbling onto a plot entirely by accident -check
Megalomaniac with money, a grandiose plan to fuck shit up and at least one psycho sidekick - check
Beautiful woman there to be overawed by Dirk/Dirk Jr/Kurt/whoever - check.
Epic set piece with a last minute save - check
Bad guys die messily - check
Lost thing is found, everybody parties -check
This time round the baddies are Turkish siblings rather than the Chinese. Interestingly while Cussler's heroes are never overshadowed by their womenfolk, he has no problem with making the female half of a villain team the one who's more dangerous and that's the case here. Read into that what you will.
There's a new gadget to play with, a decent car chase, the standard author cameo that's been a running joke for a while and a surprisingly subdued ending.
All things considered, this is a decent read and you cannot fault Clive Cussler (& son Dirk) when it comes to new setups. I'm beginning to wish, though, that he'd maybe shake things up a bit more.
I'll finish with a simple observation: Having two characters with exactly the same name in a book is liable to get confusing. Any chance you could call one Dirk Pitt and one Dirk Pitt Jr from here on in?
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