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CYCLOPS

Comic-strip specialist Cussler (Raise the Titanic!) returns with as implausible a tale as he can invent, again featuring death-proof underwater-recovery mariner Dirk Pitt. An antique blimp carrying multimillionaire publisher Raymond LeBaron is searching for the US Navy collier Cyclops, which went down in the Caribbean in 1918, when the blimp loses radio contact with land and disappears for 10 days. It reappears, manned by dessicated dead men, floating toward the Sonesta Hotel in Key Biscayne. Pitt, who is enjoying himself sailboarding, spots the colossus and snags a line from it, just averting a tragedy. Later, Mrs. LeBaron refuses to identify one of the dead, who is wearing her husband's clothes and jewelry, as LeBaron. As it happens, the three substitute corpses are Soviet cosmonauts whose bodies had been recovered and frozen a year ago. By whom? Meanwhile, the President is buttonholed by a caddy on a golf course who pretends to be carrying a bomb and reveals a fantastic private enterprise scheme which placed a US team on the moon six years ago and is now about to return its men to earth and go public. But the Russians are also establishing their own team on the moon! What is the connection between Cyclops and the moon colony? Only that LeBaron is among the rich founders of the colony, and had hoped to recover from the collier a secret treasure: a six-foot solid gold goddess with a 30-pound emerald for a head and giant ruby in her breast, stolen from a wealthy native tribe. But when Pitt locates and boards the sunken ship, the statue is missing. Also, the Russians have a ship loaded to the gills with explosive ammonium nitrate in Havana harbor and plan to blow up Havana and Castro in a tremendous fireball. Castro now wishes to establish peace with Washington. Can Pitt save Havana? As a matter of fact, he doesn't altogether and is himself caught up in the fireball. But he's immortal, right? Nicely paced junk, expertly set in motion for ultraescapists who like hollow noises between their ears.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1985

ISBN: 1451621027

Page Count: 560

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985

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DRAGON TEETH

Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...

In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.

William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.

Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.

Pub Date: May 23, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017

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LABYRINTH

Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.

Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.

Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.

Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.

Pub Date: July 30, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019

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