1.
Divine
Justice - David Baldacci - Another story about Oliver Stone
a.k.a. John Carr who is an X government spy/assassin who has appeared
in other Baldacci books. As his final act of revenge, Stone kills a CIA
chief and Senator who were responsible for the death of most of his
friends and his wife and daughter in addition to attempting to have him
taken out numerous times. As Stone is trying to get away after the hit
he gets involved with a young troubled man and decides to go with him
back to his hometown of Divine in the mountains of Virginia to hide
out. When they get to Divine Stone discovers there is more going on in
the town than is normal. In short Stone gets caught up in numerous
murders and attempted murders while befriending many of the towns
people. Meanwhile Knox, a CIA agent sent by Senators Hayes (a very bad
man) to find Stone, is searching with all available clues as to Stone's
were abouts. His job is to find Stone and then the Senators' men will
take over and make him disappear forever. All of Stone's friends who
make up the Camel Club appear in this story including Caleb, Reuben,
Annabelle and Alex. They play an important role in getting Stone out of
the mess he lands in and eventually get him out of a Supermax prison he
is put into when he discovers the secret of Divines prosperity; a
massive drug ring and money laundering operation. Senator Hayes is
finally brought down and Stone is effectively pardoned by the president
of the US for having saved his live previously. A decent read but the
story was not that inspired.
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2.
The
Emperor's Tomb - Steve Berry - Another lively book by Steve
Berry that was hard to put down. This is a story about a power struggle
in China between two ministers with opposite philosophies and the
future of China on the world scene. Cotton Malone and Cassiopeia Vitt
get drawn into the plot when the son of a Russian scientist is
kidnapped by one of the ministers to secure his cooperation. At another
level, the story is about China's oil dependence and China escaping
America's hold on mid east oil. It is said that China only has about
three days of reserve oil available for their economy and must
therefore play nice with the rest of the world to secure its continuous
oil supply. The plot uses the concept of abiotic oil which China hopes
can free it from dependence upon foreign sources. (Previously I read
Thomas Gold's book on this topic which was very interesting. The idea
is that oil doesn't only come from biologic sources but is also a
product of Earth.) As usual this Berry book does its share of globe
trotting from Copenhagen to Belgium to China over the course of the
story. Much of the story takes place around the recently discovered
clay soldiers that were buried with Qin Shi, China's first emperor. As
usual Berry combines history with the plot resulting in a very
interesting read.
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3.
Here,
There and Everywhere - Geoff Emerick with Howard Massey - This
is a good book for Beatles fans. The story is told from the perspective
of Geoff Emerick who was the recording engineer for much of the Beatles
music and later for Wings and later yet for Paul McCartney. Geoff was
just 15 years old when he got a job with EMI at the Abbey Road studio
in London. One of his first sessions was for an up and coming group
called the Beatles. Geoff worked his way up at EMI from tape machine
operator to record cutter to balance engineer and finally producer.
Geoff's sonic experiments along with the Beatles talent produced the
records we are all familiar with. The story describes how the Beatles
were constantly pushing the envelope on what could be done in the
recording studio with two and four track tape recorders. They were
always trying for new sounds that had never been attempted before. Some
surprising facts emerge like: John Lennon did not like his voice, John
Lennon was effectively bi-polar and George Harrison was initially an
inept guitar player. The story describes the early Beatles when all the
members worked together on songs in the studio and had a great time
doing it. Till later when they couldn't really stand the sight of each
other and worked individually. This book reinforces what amazing talent
the Beatles had and how lucky they were to hook up with Geoff. Geoff
Emerick's philosophy about always trying new techniques for recording
has even influenced my personal recording since reading this book. This
is a book I will probably read again at some point. It's a story that
is near and dear to my heart.
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4.
The
Little Green Book of Absinthe - Paul Owens and Paul Nathan -
This book dispelled many of the preconceptions I had about Absinthe.
While Absinthe does contain wormwood, which can be deadly in quantity,
it is in such small quantities as to be harmless. In fact wormwood
really is a bittering agent in the brew. Absinthe is actually a very
strong alcohol that has been infused with various herbals depending
upon the style. Herbals include: wormwood, anise, fennel, melissa,
hyssop, mint and many others. Absinthe drinkers talk about the
secondary effect which seems to counteract the depressive effects of
alcohol. This maybe explained by the herbs which have a tendency to
increase circulation leading to a heightened sense of alertness and
lucidity. The book talks about the history of Absinthe and the three
varieties: French, Swiss and Bohemian. The majority of the book is
recipes for cocktails, punches, etc. that utilize Absinthe.
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5.
Life
- Keith Richards with James Fox - In this book Keith tells the story of
his life first as a child where he met Mick Jagger and later as a
member of the Rolling Stones. It is obvious from the outset that Keith
is much more together mentally than the media would have us believe. He
did spend 10 years as a junkie but he still managed to write great
songs and perform. He was for ten years on a list of rock stars most
likely to die that year but he somehow pulled through. He tells stories
of the early days in America when he was more comfortable with the
black community than he was in the white community. He has something
about him that allows him inside other cultures more than most people.
Along the way he was married to three super models and had scores of
women trying to crawl all over him. Over the years he was busted time
and time again but alway somehow got out of it. He also managed to meet
and play music with most of the people who inspired him musically. He
also talks about Mick Jagger and his inflated ego and how that almost
destroyed the Stones. I enjoyed reading this book more than I thought I
would. It never got dull and he never let his ego run wild. This book
documents a period of history when rock and roll was king and society
was not very accepting of the changes it was causing.
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6.
Codex
- Lev Grossman - A novel having to do with old books and a video
game. This story is about a stock broker named Edward that gets caught
up in a struggle between an English Duke and Duchess to find an ancient
book that would compromise the Duke's noble heritage. Edward who has
just accepted a job in England is mysteriously assigned to catalog an
old book collection belonging to them, a task of which he has no
knowledge or experience. Along the way he meets Margaret an ancient
book researcher who helps him understand old books and assists him in
his task to find the book. They eventually find the missing book and he
goes off to England thinking he and the Duchess have triumphed and he
will be setup for life. In the end he finds out that Margaret was
really working for the Duke and has taken the manuscript and left him
with a mere half million dollars. In the end he shrugs his shoulders
and decides to take his new job in England after all. The Duchess and
her staff all go into hiding for fear of their lives. Although the
ending was a little strange I enjoyed reading the book.
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7.
Hell's
Corner - David Baldacci - Another book with Oliver Stone a.k.a.
John Carr. This time Stone (with help from an MI6 agent Mary Chapman
along with the Camel Club) are tasked with finding out why a bomb was
set off in Lafayette Park near the White House. Oliver has been
promised by the President that if he solves this mystery his record
will be wiped clean for his justified killing of Senator Hayes (see
Divine Justice) while trying to save the President's life. In this
story, Marisa Friedman (a high level intelligence officer) is persuaded
by a Mexican drug lord to kill the Presidents of both the US and Mexico
in exchange for a billion dollars and to blame it on the Russians who
are trying to take over the Mexican drug trade. Friedman carries out an
intricate plot using nanobots to change explosives at the molecular
level so that bomb sniffing dogs cannot detect them. She is not
suspected until the very end and sends Stone on an endless series of
misdirections in trying to accomplish her mission. Of course in the
end, Stone figures this all out but in the mean time over 15 innocent
people are dead and Stone goes from good to bad guy numerous times in
the eyes of American intelligence organizations. This was a OK book,
but nothing special.
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8.
Flying
to the Moon - Michael Collins - This was a short book about
Michal Collins' life leading up to him piloting the command module for
Apollo 11, the first manned landing on the moon with cohorts Buzz
Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. He tells of his early love of flying which
resulted in him getting accepted into the astronaut program. His first
space flight was on Gemini 10. He talks of his early training on the
vomit comet (though he didn't call it that) and the centrifuge (which
he disliked) and getting to fly faster and faster planes. While in
training for landing on the Moon he had to learn to fly helicopters
which he really liked. Although very smart (you have to be to be an
astronaut) he was always saying that everyone else was smarter than he
was though that probably wasn't true. He originally shied away from the
math heavy assignments and gladly accepted an assignment helping with
the design of space suits for which he got to travel all over the
world. The last part of the book was about the Apollo 11 mission which
went remarkably smoothly by his account. After Apollo 11 he quit the
space business so he could be with his family more and spent a good
deal of time on the lecture circuit. He concludes the book with his
thoughts about the future of the space program (including the yet to be
flown Space Shuttle) and how humans might expand out from Earth. He
clearly was still excited about the possibilities, few of which have
been realized in the subsequent years. He has an easy going writing
style so I may read his other book, "Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's
Journeys" as well. It is kind of ironic that the Space Shuttle was the
new thing when this book is written and I'm reading this book as the
program ends.
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9.
Appetite
for Self Destruction - Steve Knopper - This was a somewhat
interesting book about the rise and fall of the record industry. During
the good times the record industry and its executives flew high and
money was no object. During the bad times it was all about trying to
maintain their life styles by laying off workers and blaming piracy for
their down fall. The root of the problem is that the recording industry
executives wanted to alway maintain the status quo so any new
technology that came along was to be firm squashed. It happened first
when CD first came into existence. The record industry was firmly
against CDs until they found out that many people would rebuy their
complete music collection for the increase fidelity CDs offered.
Digital music fared no better and the numerous attempts to sell digital
music online were fought with law suits and cease and desist orders.
Another mistake the record industry made was getting rid of the single
and forcing everyone to buy a complete CD when they only really wanted
one or two songs. Another mistake was the RIAA suing its customers for
music sharing via services like Napster. Closing following these
mistakes were the industry's attempt to prevent piracy by using various
forms of digital rights management most of which were intrusive and
buggy. Sony made the biggest mistakes in this area by installing
Rootkits on computers people used to play CD on. When iTunes and Steve
Jobs came along the record industry had no choice but to participate as
their sales were plumiting. From the discussion in the book it doesn't
seem the industry has really changed even though the environment in
which they work has changed radically. The conclusion the author draws
is that record companies are going to get smaller and smaller as
artists figure out ways to record and produce their own music and
distribute it via the Internet. The days of the artist getting pennies
while the record companies got rich are over.
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10.
Shock
Wave - Clive Cussler - This is one of twenty some Dirt Pitt
books by the author but the first one I have read. It was an exciting,
fast paced story about diamonds, greed and killing of innocent animals
and people. The story revolves around a very nasty bad guy who is
trying to crash the worlds diamond market for personal gain. By using a
new state of the art ultrasonic mining system at four places on the
earth a sonic convergence was set up that caused death at the point of
intersection. Dirt Pitt sets out to find out who/what is responsible
for the killing of large quantities of sea life which brings him into
direct conflict with the diamond baron. In the story Dirt is
shot, beat up, marooned on the ocean in a rubber raft and still manages
to triumph in the end. This was a good, though hard to believe, story
and I will probably read others in this series.
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11.
The
Grand Design - Stephen Hawkings and Leonard Mlodinow - The
latest Hawkings book that got major press because Hawking states
repeatedly that a God is not necessary to explain our universe. This
book doesn't contain anything I haven't read somewhere else before and
because of that I was a bit disappointed. His arguments revolve around
the anthropic principle that says the universe is as it is because if
it weren't we wouldn't be around to comment on it. He did talk about
the weak anthropic principle having to do with our environment in the
universe; us being in the Goldilocks zone and the strong anthropic
principle having to do with the values of important scientific
constants and if they were different we wouldn't be here either.
Probably the most interesting thing to me about the information
presented was the number of times Richard Feynman's contributions to
quantum physics were mentioned especially his sum over histories
theory. I had a real problem staying awake while reading this book as
it isn't the most riveting reading. I'm somewhat amazed I got through
it at all.
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12.
Night
Probe - Clive Cussler - Another in the series of Dirk Pitt books
this time having to do with the unification of the US and Canada. In
the near future the United States is on the verge of bankruptcy and is
out of energy. The president of the US is looking for ways out of the
situation and intends to address the Canadian parliament to propose a
union. Behind the scenes Dirk Pitt and his crew are searching for the
North American Treaty which was supposedly signed by the US and Britain
effectively deeding Canada to the US in 1914 in return for a large sum
of money which Britain needed to prepare for WW1. Two of the three
copies of the treaty were destroyed by tragic accidents and the final
copy was lost so the US and Britain decided to forget about this
arrangement. The president of the US however wants to use this as
leverage to bring the countries together so he enlists the aid of
Admiral Sandecker and NUMA to find the one remaining copy of the
treaty. Of course the plot involves underwater diving and rescue which
most of Cussler books do. This was an OK book but not on the same level
as Shock Wave and some of his other books I have read. This must of
been written early in Cussler's career.
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13.
The
Mediterranean Caper - Clive Cussler - While NUMA is searching
for a fish called a Teaser that should have disappeared with the
dinosaurs millions of years ago they get caught up in a heroin
smuggling operation run by a German war criminal who is not who he says
he is. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino are assigned to this operation because
the research ship searching for the fish is plagued with problems. Dirk
determines the problems are sabotage and starts investigating. He soon
is caught up in the mess because of a beautiful woman (who would have
guessed). He gets beat up and shot but still survives to bring the bad
German to justice. A mindless but entertaining read.
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14.
Dragon
- Clive Cussler - Another book with the usual crew Dirk, Al and the
Admiral. This time they get involved in a plot by Japanese ultra
nationalist industrialists who think they have America over a barrel
because of their huge investments in the US and the debt we owe them.
They believe the US's time has past and that it is Japans turn to
dominate world politics and economics. These Japanese bad guys plant
atomic bombs into the air conditioning units of cars shipped into the
US and place them strategically around the US not to cause destruction
but to possibly create EM pulses that are capable of disrupting
communications and scrambling computer records if the US doesn't do as
they say. They want to take ownership of Hawaii and California, have a
presidential cabinet position and be guaranteed that the US will not
nationalize their assets or enact laws that slow them down
economically. This diabolical plot and the manufacture of the atomic
weapons happens underground on a small island off the coast of Japan
with no supposed knowledge of the Japanese government. They however
didn't count on Dirk Pitt who sets off an atomic bomb on the ocean
floor that causes a huge seismic event that causes the island to sink
into the ocean and then be battered by the ensuing tsunami. This was a
very good read that was suspenseful for the entire last quarter of the
book even though you knew the good guys were going to win in the end.
This book was as good as Shock Wave I think. With this, I think I will
take a break from Dirk Pitt for a while and read something else.
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15.
The
Great Disruption - Paul Gilding - This is a book that predicts
turbulent times to come as a result of global warming, over population
and the inability of Earth to provide the resources necessary for
growth. Gilding predicts economies based on growth are dead because the
Earth can no longer provide. He says people's pursuit of more material
goods is not making us any happier and to make life better for all
inhabitants of Earth will require people to stop shopping and stop
working so hard and to share the effort required so everyone has more
time for other non materialistic pursuits. He describes the future as
he sees it and the fact that this great disruption has already started.
He says that many of the changes that will be mandatory in the future
have already begun. The most interesting thing for me is that the local
food movement, organic food production, farmers markets, the maker
movement, the concept of socially responsible investments trying to
modify the behavior of corporations, trading and bartering are all part
of his predicted future that are happening now. Taken individually,
each of these movements are interesting in and of themselves but when
taken together the trend is obvious. Each of these movements promotes a
leaner less impactful life style and attempts to weaken the power of
major corporations over our lives and return that power to the people.
Gilding is very upbeat about the future but also says that the next 100
years are going to be chaotic and stressful. He predicts that coal and
oil will have to be left behind while renewable sources of energy will
need to be improved and/or invented. Honestly this book was hard to
read as it says our life style as we know it cannot stand and for this
reason it kept me awake at night worrying about things. As a result, HH
and I are putting in a greenhouse and are looking into solar to
make us more secure in the uncertain times ahead.
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16.
Sahara
- Clive Cussler - Another book with the usual suspects: Dirk, Al and
the
Admiral. This time they are sent into Africa to the Niger River to
investigate a strange pollutant that is causing red tide blooms in the
Atlantic that are so large that scientists are worried it will consume
all of the oxygen on the Earth and kill all life forms, including
humans. Woven into the plot are two subplots. One having to do with an
Australian woman aviator who was lost in her plane over Africa in the
1920s and the second subplot was finding a Civil War ironclad boat "The
Texas" which was assumed sunk in the Atlantic but which made it across
the Atlantic and up the Niger River carrying confederate gold and a
captured Abraham Lincoln. Dirk and Al are captured numerous times by
the French Industrialist Massarde and the corrupt leader of the Malian
people General Zateb Kazim as they investigate a state of the art solar
incinerator for industrial and nuclear waste. Turns out the incinerator
does what it was designed to do but to get more money Massarde is
accepting much more waste then the plant was designed to deal with.
Instead of incinerating it he is burying the waste on site in
underground caverns. Unfortunately the waste is leaking and causing the
pollution feeding the red tide. During their adventures Dirk and Al are
captured and sent as slaves to a gold mine where Massarde sends all of
his detractors and even the engineers that designed and built the plant
so they could not tell the world about the storage of the waste. Of
course Dirk and Al escape and have to cross 400 km of the Sahara to get
help to rescue the slaves at the mine. Later when they return to the
mine with a UN special forces team and rescue the prisoners they are
caught while trying to leave Mali and have to fight a ferocious battle
with General Kazim's forces which just about wipes them out. Luckily
the American president is sucked in by the Admiral who sends other
special forces troops to rescue the UN special forces and the freed
slaves. In the end Dirk and Al are successful and become hero's and of
course Dirk gets the girl and a special car which he takes for his car
collection back in the states. This was a thick but good book which
kept me entertained for a good long while.
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17.
Pacific
Vortex - Clive Cussler - This is Cussler's first Dirk Pitt book
(1983) and it is a pretty good one. In this story Dirk finds a message
buoy from the Navy's newest nuclear sub that sunk without warning on
its maiden voyage and has not been found for retrieval. This book has
the prerequisite evil villain Delphi who, of course, has a beautiful
daughter that falls in love with Dirk and saves him in the end. In
trying to locate the missing sub, Dirk and his Navy associates must
enter into the Pacific Vortex which is the Pacific's version of the
Bermuda Triangle located north of Hawaii where many ships have gone
down and were never heard from again. Come to find out Delphi has a
hidden lair in caves in a shallow sea mount and he is responsible for
the lost ships and the vortex. The villain would wait for the ships to
enter the vortex where they would slow way down because of the shallow
depth and his minions would capture the ship. All help messages from
the ship would be jammed so it would appear the ship just disappeared.
Once the ships were captured, they would be repainted and structurally
altered and re-registered under a different name. Delphi would sell the
cargo and eventually the ship or would sink the newly registered ship
and collect the insurance. Unfortunately Delphi never counted on Dirk
coming on the scene and soon Dirk had figured out the evil plot and was
working to recover the sub and to stop Delphi's evil plan. It was
interesting to me that Dirk, Al and the Adminal are all there in this
first book. I guess I'm a real Cussler fan as I cannot stop reading his
books.
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18.
Deep
Six - Clive Cussler - I did it again. I read another Dirk Pitt
novel. This time the bad guys are a Korean shipping company run by a
evil old woman who uses every means possible to make money. In exchange
for $1 billion dollars in gold from the Soviets, the bad guys kidnap
the US President, Vice President and the Speaker of the House and turn
them over to Soviet scientists who insert a mind control device into
the President so his policies can be controlled to their benefit. Of
course they almost succeed until NUMA is called in and the Admiral,
Pitt and Giordino start to figure out the evil plot and how to stop it.
In the final scenes of this story, the Koreans are towing a barge
containing a laboratory (which has the Vice President and Senator Loren
Smith (Pitts current love interest) locked in it) down the
Mississippi River to be sunk in the ocean to hide the evidence that
could convict them. When all else fails Dirk and Al commender a
riverboat steamship carrying 30 or so people who do battle reenactments
and crash it into the tug boat that is towing the laboratory. The
pseudo soldiers do an amazing job with their muskets and cannon against
the crew of the tug boat who have automatic weapons and in the end they
take the day. This was a fun read but now I must go and find another
Dirk Pitt novel to read.
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19.
Vixen
03 - Clive Cussler - Wasn't feeling up to snuff this weekend so
I read another Dirk Pitt novel. This time Dirk finds a lost military
airplane at the bottom of a Colorado high mountain lake near Loren
Smiths cabin and is hell bent on finding out its story. Come to find
out, this plane was part of a secret mission to fly a cargo of 16"
cannon shell containing an extremely virulent and long lasting bacteria
from a base in Colorado to Hawaii for a military test. At the same time
there is a war going on in South Africa with the African Army of
Resistance or AAR trying to dislodge the white rule (which has since
happened in reality) and both sides of the struggle will do anything to
advance their cause. The white government of South Africa is trying to
sway world opinion their way (Operation Wild Rose) by sending in squads
of blacks dressed in the uniforms of the AAR and doing ruthless killing
of their own white people including killing the family of a Scottish
farmer knowing he will seek revenge against the AAR. It turns out that
some local residents living near the lake the plane is submerged in
also find out about the plane's cargo and sell the toxic cannon shells
to an arms dealer who provides them to the AAR (not knowing they are
biological weapons). The defense minister of the South African
government decides the world still isn't supporting their cause and
decides to unleash the Scottish farmer on Washington DC under the guise
of the AAR so the world will take notice and join their cause against
the blacks. The farmer, being an old British Naval Commander, retrofits
a battle ship bought as scrap and sails it up the river towards
Washington DC and starts firing its cannons. It is up to Dirk, Al and
the Admiral to stop the shelling to prevent the biological agent from
being unleashed on Washington which, of course, they do but just barely.
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20.
Good
Blood - Aaron Elkins - This is the first book by this author I
have read. This author was recommended to me by my friend Ray who, of
course, has every book this author has written. Ray was also
responsible for the Dirk Pitt jag I have been on recently. In this
book/series Gideon Oliver, professor of forensic anthropology, is the
main character. He and his wife Julie accompany Paul, their friend who
runs a low cost travel company, to the Italian countryside to conduct a
biking tour and then to visit Paul's Italian family (that he
doesn't like very much) who appear to be rich and live on an island in
Lake Maggiore. Their visit happens at a time when the son of the
patrone, Vincenzo de Grazia, has just been kidnapped and the police get
involved in trying to get the boy back. Caravale, a Carabinieri
Colonel, is assigned the case and when he finds out that Gideon is a
world renowned forensic scientist he quickly involves him when a
decomposed body is found during the repair of a storm drain. It turns
out the body was a member of Paul's deGrazia family (the previous
patrone) who was thought to have died in a boating accident. As the
story unfolds we find out that Vincenzo is not really the son of the
murdered patrone but that Paul is and that the kidnapping was a scheme
hatched by Vincenzo sister to get 5 million Euros from the insurance
company. This same sister was responsible for the patrones murder among
others. Paul, now the head of the deGrazia family, decides to allow
Vincenzo to continue being the patrone and to continue running the
family businesses as he and his friends return to the US. This was a
decent read once I finally got into the plot. Our recent trip to Italy
made me more interested in this book than I might have otherwise been.
I'm sure I'll read more of this book series.
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21.
The
Sixth Man - David Baldacci - A novel of intrigue among the
security agencies of the US government. A private contractor who has
changed the game in a very positive way by integrating all intelligence
analysis is being prosecuted by the old school people at homeland
security who want to do their own intelligence gathering and analysis
even though it is much less affective that way. Sean and Michelle are
hired to investigate a lawyer who is killed while working on the
fringes of the security industry. This lawyer is working on behalf of a
genus locked in a mental institution. This genus is the center piece of
the new intelligence analysis method as he can take in and analyze
amazing amounts of data at a time. The secretary of homeland security,
an unscrupulous and yet beautiful woman is trying to have the genus
killed so things can return to normal so her power base is no longer
threatened. This was an OK book which held my interest but I think I
might be getting bored with Baldacci.
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22.
Inca
Gold - Clive Cussler - Another Dirk Pitt novel with Dirk,
Al, the Admiral, Rudi Gunn and Loren Smith (the Congresswoman). This is
the most engaging Dirk Pitt novel I've read since Shock Wave. This is a
story about ancient Inca treasure which was hidden by the Incas inside
a mountain in what is now Baja California which had an underground
river running through it. The Zolar family, a smart but ruthless bunch
of international art thieves and forgers, finds out about the treasure
and intends to steal it, killing any and every one who stands in their
way. Dirt and NUMA get involved when they are called in to rescue
scientists who are trapped while investigating a cenote (a sink hole)
in Peru containing Spanish artifacts. Dirk gets pulled into the story
when he finds out that one of Sir Francis Drakes treasure ships never
made it back to England from Peru and was swept ashore in Ecuador as a
result of a tsunami. He and Al set out to find this ship and as a
result find out about the location of the Inca treasure by decoding
Drake's quipu, a knotted collection of metal strands once used to
describe trade goods and historical events. NUMA is informed by US
Customs and the FBI that the Zolar family is bad news and were told to
let the Zolar's find the treasure so they can finally be caught and
brought to justice. In the ensuing turmoil, Rudi and Loren get captured
and are nearly raped/killed while being held captives within the
treasure mountain. With no ways of entering the mountain from the
surface and saving their colleagues (because of intense security
including the cooperation of bad elements in the Mexican government),
Dirk and Al dive into Satan's Sink, another sinkhole, and float their
way through a previously unknown and unexplored underground river
toward the cavern containing the treasure. During their assault Dirk,
Al, Loren and Rudi are all badly hurt but triumph in the end. This was
a fast paced story which caught my interested because of caves,
caverns, underground rivers and, of course, treasure.
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23.
Raise The Titanic - Clive Cussler - I cannot seem to stop
reading Dirk Pitt novels. In this story Dirk is assigned the task of
salvaging the Titanic from over 12,000 feet of water in the North
Atlantic. This insanely expensive undertaking is financed by a super
secret organization in the US government because it is suspected the
worlds only byzanium ore was being shipped to the US on the Titanic
when it sunk. Byzanium ore is important because of its special
properties and because it is needed for a missle defense system the US
wants to build. Of course the Soviets also want the byzanium and
attempt to take over the salvaged Titanic and kill all of the salvage
crew so they can say they found the ship abandoned and claim it and the
ore as their own. Of course Dirk will have none of this and comes to
the rescue and captures the Soviet intelligence agents behind the
hijacking and saves the day. Come to find out however there is no
byzanium ore on the ship and instead of being heros, Dirk and NUMA are
being investigated by Congress for misuse of taxpayer money (as if the
Congress critters really care about spending other peoples money). All
is not lost however when Dirk digs deeper into the historical evidence
only to find the byzanium in a grave in England. Not one of Cussler's
best by not a bad read on a cold winters day.
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