Atlantis Found: Dirk Pitt #15 (The Dirk Pitt Adventures) - Softcover

Cussler, Clive

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140287965 ISBN 13: 9780140287967

Publisher: Penguin, 2001

Synopsis

Around the world ancient artefacts are suddenly appearing, hinting at a catastrophe that will soon visit Earth ...

Dirk Pitt is on hand at a Colorado archaeological site where an ancient and mysterious artefact has been found - one that is perhaps linked to other strange objects turning up across the globe. And soon Pitt's skills and ingenuity are desperately needed to rescue the team after a suspicious explosion seals them deep underground.

It quickly becomes clear that the artefacts carry a message: a warning of global Armageddon. Yet a shadowy organisation called the Fourth Empire not only wants to stop others from heeding that warning, but is also actively seeking to accelerate the end it foretells. Now Pitt and NUMA must face this diabolical foe, who will stop at nothing to wipe out all life on earth ...

About this title

Review

Dirk Pitt, indestructible hero of 14 previous Clive Cussler novels and special projects director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (which is something like the CIA of the ocean depths), makes James Bond look like a tuxedoed, martini-swilling poser. Pitt has raised the Titanic, escaped massive volcanic eruptions, ducked nuclear explosions, foiled criminal plans for world domination, saved everyone on Earth from germ warfare and mastered the ins and outs of various electronic gizmos and futuristic vehicles while evading every imaginable form of almost certain death. (Of course, he's also wildly successful with brilliant, beautiful women, but in an admirably circumspect, sensitive-guy way.) It stands to reason Pitt's the right man to handle a crisis of millennial proportions.

When mysterious black obsidian skulls and other artefacts of an exceedingly ancient culture begin to turn up in odd places, Pitt jumps in with both feet. It soon becomes dangerously apparent that a powerful, amoral group of fanatics calling itself the Fourth Empire wants the strange discoveries to remain underground. Pitt teams up with a beautiful red-haired expert in ancient languages to decipher the meaning of the artefacts. They were made 10 millennia ago in a then-temperate Antarctica by a seafaring civilization advanced enough to predict its own destruction by a comet impact. Now the Fourth Empire (whose literal and figurative progenitor comes as no surprise) is predicting a similar disaster in only a matter of months and preparing to take control of the Earth.

Cussler's known for hands-on research--his hobbies are the backbone of Pitt's adventures: Flying, climbing, diving, racing. His scientific and historical riffs that fill in the background of Atlantis Found are the weakest parts of the book--they're Pitt-less, and give every discovery in the book away early. But what the heck--Cussler's not the king of suspense, he's the emperor of non-stop action. Atlantis Found bounces along on a good-humoured techno-joyride and for Cussler's legion of fans, that will be more than enough. --Barrie Trinkle

Synopsis

September 1858: An Antarctic whaler stumbles upon an aged wreck, its grisly frozen crew guarding crates of odd antiquities - including a beautifully carved obsidian skull. March 2001: A team of anthropologists gaze in awe at a well of strange inscriptions, moments before a blast seals them deep within the Colorado rock. April 2001: A research ship in the Antarctic is set upon and nearly sunk by an impossibility - a Nazi submarine thought to have been destroyed 56 years before. Dirk Pitt knows that somehow these incidents are connected, and his investigations soon land him in the midst of an ancient mystery with very modern consequences, racing to save not only his own life - but the future of the world itself.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0140287965
• ISBN 13: 9780140287967
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 768