Something's Alive on the Titanic

The author of The President's Plane Is Missing and other books set in the skies goes underwater with his new suspense novel, a thriller with supernatural overtones. Discoveries made--but never fully divulged--by a diving team in 1975 are the impetus for a new expedition organized to explore the wreckage of the doomed luxury liner, which went to its watery grave in 1912. The scientists and treasure hunters involved in the 1993 expedition are aware that the previous venture was apparently cursed; strange atmospheric conditions eventually sank the research vessel, but not before its passengers had glimpsed some sort of monster protecting the Titanic hulk. The beast had no clear form, but presented itself as the deepest, most personal fear of each observer. Counting among its members the sole survivor of the previous effort, the new expedition is motivated by the knowledge that a fortune in gold bullion lies in the Titanic 's hold. Serling weaves bits of historical data into his narrative with too heavy a hand, but he does successfully skirt the issue of why the three real-life research trips to the Titanic in the 1980s never encountered the mysterious creature. Read with a suspension of disbelief, the book is a page-turner, the ending kept in doubt until the rousingly dramatic conclusion. (Nov.)