cover image Cyclops

Cyclops

Clive Cussler. Simon & Schuster, $18.45 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-671-50374-1

Written in the bestselling style of Pacific Vortex! and Deep Six, and with the indestructible Dirk Pitt as its hero, this latest Cussler suspense caper features, and ingeniously connects, a maverick American colony on the Moon, a fabulous sunken treasure sought by an unscrupulous, blimp-owning financier, and two cunningly devised Soviet schemes, one to steal U.S. space secrets, the other to replace Fidel Castro with a Kremlin puppet, no matter what the cost in human lives. The nonstop action involves murder and torture as well as superpower politicking, and Pitt extricates himself from one desperate situation after another, even finding time for a little romance. The writing is brittle, but the reader is not likely to worry about that in a story whose plot resembles a box of exploding fireworks and poses some interesting questions regarding both Cuba and the militarization of space. Paperback rights to Pocket Books. February 7