The Cussler Machine

The machine is large, and cranked into high gear. The exact design isn’t clear, but it’s probably shaped like an antique aquatic car, and powered by a twelve cylinder, 3,760 horsepower marine diesel. From a specialized conveyor belt jutting out from the side comes book, after book, after book. The machine is the Cussler.

Clive, to be more specific.

He’s probably America’s number-one action author, and is responsible for three different action lines – with heroes Dirk Pitt, Kurt Austin, and Juan Cabrillo. There are a couple of titles just out and several due this year from Clive Cussler, Paul Kemprecos, and Jack Du Brul, the three men primarily responsible for the action-output.

“Polar Shift” has been out long enough to find in paperback. It’s a Kurt Austin adventure with Paul Kemprecos doing the bulk of the writing. To his credit, he is able to maintain the flying-at-the-edge-of-believability quality of Cussler’s style, and duplicates the wise-cracking, pulp-fiction dialogue that fans have come to expect.

A group of well-funded bad guys have invented a giant spark plug that they dangle from a huge ship, and when they throw the switch, it creates tidal waves, boat-sucking whirlpools, electrical flares, radioactive rays, a shifting of the earth’s crust over the core, and car chases. (To be honest, the car chases are an indirect result.) The pretty archeologist is threatened by thugs, the dwarf wooly mammoths are threatened with extinction, and it falls to Kurt to save the day.
Cussler novels have long been filled with technical jargon. The bad guy never wields a rifle. He’s usually described as having a gas-operated Automat Kalashnikova modernized AK-47 7.62mm with machined receiver capable of 600 rounds per minute. The pilot never flies a simple airplane; it’s always the same lengthy description.

Kemprecos manages to tone down the internet-driven descriptions and keep the fiction moving at a Cussler-inspired pace, and fans will find familiar lines and action a’ plenty…enough to satisfy until the next unit is ejected from the machine.