An underwater graveyard in the Pacific Northwest... A mysterious seaport in the bayous of Louisiana... A diabolical plot to destroy America!

Unknown waters, 1948. The Princess Dou Wan, a sea-weary cruise ship covertly seized by Chiang Kai-shek, slams into a devastating storm that tears the hull apart and sends it and a mysterious cargo down into the depths, lost to all searchers for more than fifty years.

Pacific Northwest, 2000. Dirk Pitt rescues a beautiful undercover immigration agent from Qin Shang, an insatiably greedy smuggler whose vast fortune is made selling Chinese immigrants into slavery around the globe. Shang's campaign contributions have bought him a collection of powerful U.S.politicians, but Pitt finds the secret behind Shang's vast and mystifying seaport in the Louisiana bayou to be shockingly sinister. From an adrenaline-pumped race against time and tide up the Mississippi River to a desperate dash to recover Chinese treasures, Dirk Pitt faces one of his most formidable foes -- a madman bent on killing hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children with a catastrophic surge of mass destruction.

The villian in this book is a smuggler. A smuggler of human lives to anywhere on the globe he can make a profit. Cussler works in some intricately plotted suspense and some jingoistic slurs that if you can bear aren't too bad. But, if they were missing it would be better.

As the plot thickens, Pitt goes from the high seas to the Mississippi River trying to figure out just how this smuggler gets his contraband cargo in to port. Of course, what good Cussler adventure doesn't have some treasure hidden somewhere as a subplot. Well, this has a booty that is very suprising. Set in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek is leaving the Chinese mainland.

Cussler's masterful storytelling, with the main plot and intricately woven subplots bringing the adventure to a fever pitch. The villian is a formidable crafty survivor and Pitt has his hands full with this adventure. Of course, all of the supporting personel from NUMA are at Pitt's disposal spicing the story just right.

The story moves quickly as the narrative is straight forward and to the point. The dialog between Pitt and his trusty partner Al Giordino is classic Cussler. I enjoyed this novel as it was entertaining with adventure and intriguing. You will be caught early in this engrossing book and won't be disengaged until the end.


Surprised by the xenophobic undertones   July 15, 2004
 4 out of 9 found this review helpful

I'm an Australian of Asian descent, and I've been a huge Clive Cussler (and Tom Clancy) fan since I was about 12 years old. It was Clive Cussler that introduced me to the concept of "sex scenes" within books, and because I had a fascination of the ocean, NUMA as a concept always fascinated me.

Up til' now, I'd always assumed that Dirk Pitt as a character was fighting for the freedom of everyone around the world, regardless of their race. This isn't the first time Clive Cussler has used Asian villains in his novels (Deep Six), but it's the first time he's ever expressed any antipathy or animosity towards Asians in general.

Both Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler formed an integral part of my childhood reading. Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Raise the Titanic, Deep Six - these were all books I loved reading. But now that I'm aware of their antipathy towards Asians, I feel like I've been unceremoniously excluded from an important club. I want to love Cussler's novels, but I just can't if he's not going to extend the same respect towards me as a reader.


Hey Clive - Go back to writer's school   May 17, 2005
 4 out of 12 found this review helpful

I started reading Clive Cussler's books with Raise The Titanic. It was a new spin on writing. But as his style "matured," the writing went downhill. He made himself a minor character in the series. Then a not-so minor character. Then a major player. What an ego! Along the way the writing became cookie-cutter, and the imagination and uniqueness that made the books stand out slowly disappeared. The plots became totally predictable - no surprises anywhere. We knew how the book would end somewhere near the middle. I could not even complete this book. I swore to myself that his previous novel was the last I would read. I should have stuck with that promise to myself and saved the money. Good-bye Pitt and Cussler. You had a good run. Hang it up.