Clive Cussler’s the Devil’s Sea: A Dirk Pitt Novel

A search for a lost artifact drives the exciting 26th Dirk Pitt novel (after 2019’s Celtic Empire), the first solo contribution of Cussler, the son of Clive Cussler (1931–2020), to his late father’s bestselling signature series. In the prologue, set in 1959, Tibetan monks succeed in getting the Nechung Idol, a large statue carved from a meteorite, onto a plane while under attack from invading Chinese Communist forces. The statue is of paramount importance to the Dalai Lama, who has just fled Tibet. In 2022, no one knows the idol’s whereabouts, until Dirk Pitt Sr. and his children, twins Dirk Pitt Jr. and Summer, all of whom work for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, discover clues in a plane crash from decades earlier into the Philippine Sea. Meanwhile, the Chinese, including the mentally unstable Lt. Zheng Yijong, a member of the Chinese Army Rocket Forces Special Operations Command, are seeking the Nechung Idol because they can use its metal in their new line of supersonic missiles. All three Pitts escape death scores of times as the action races to a showdown between them and the villainous Zheng. Cussler has done his father proud. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency. (Nov.)