More farfetched doings for Dirk Pitt, director of special projects at the National Underwater and Marine Agency—starting, circa 1989, when people start dropping horribly dead in Alaskan waters: somehow, it seems, ultrasecret Nerve Agent S has been leaking into the sea up there! ("One teaspoon will kill every living organism in four million gallons of seawater.") So Dirk and his crew head north and manage to find the source of the killer-pollution in a sunken ship. But how did the poison (stolen from a US Army dumping ground in Nevada) wind up on that ship? And why do clues aboard the sunken vessel connect to other lost mystery-ships? Those are the puzzles for Dirk, who, ignited by the Nerve Agent death of colleague Julie Mendoza (her protective suit got torn during a volcano), determines to track down the villains behind it all. But meanwhile those villains—a Fu Manchu-ish corporation headed by an aged Dragon Lady—are up to even more diabolical schemes. In cahoots with the USSR, you see, the evil Orientals have arranged for the US Prez and VP to be abducted from the Presidential yacht in the Potomac! Why? So that the Russians can give the Prez a super-brainwashing—just your basic injection of RNA into the hippocampus, plus a nifty brain implant. Before the President suddenly reappears, however, claiming to have been engaged in a super-summit meeting, Dirk has again been called into emergency action: he locates the sunken yacht, figuring out how the magical abduction was arranged. And after the thoroughly re-brained Prez behaves so weirdly that he gets impeached, there'll be still another major mission for Cussler's indefatigable hero: Dirk must find and rescue the still-missing VP before slimy Speaker of the House Alan Moran (a tool of the Oriental conspiracy) takes over the White House. The villains repeatedly try to kill Dirk; congresswoman Loren, Dirk's love, gets abducted when she tries to lend a hand; the bad guys fight among themselves; nautical, explosive rescues and showdowns proliferate. In short: more of the same from unpretentious, hard-working actioneer Cussler—with faceless characters, loopy plotting, solid techno-detail, and (this time) more than a glimmer of Yellow Peril racism.
Pub Date: May 21, 1984
ISBN: 1416516859
Page Count: 545
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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