Latest on Dirk Pitt is 'pure escapism'

'Atlantis Found' by Clive Cussler

Review by L.D. Meagher

February 11, 2000
Web posted at: 5:11 p.m. EST (2211 GMT)

(CNN) -- For fans of Clive Cussler, only two words are necessary: Pitt's back. For the uninitiated, perhaps a few words of explanation are in order. Dirk Pitt, the secret agent in scuba gear, is the hero of fourteen previous Cussler novels. He roams the seven seas in search of high adventure, and cheats death at every turn. Pitt is an archetype. Rather, he's an amalgam of archetypes-part James Bond, part Captain Nemo, part Indiana Jones. In his fifteenth adventure, he confronts two more archetypes: Nazis and the Lost Continent of Atlantis.

"Atlantis Found" is the kind of novel that demands the reader suspend disbelief from page one. It is pure escapism, the sort of book that travels in beach bags. Indeed, it seems almost tailored for perusal on a hot summer's afternoon, since a lot of the action takes place on the frozen landscape of Antarctica. And action it has.

Dirk Pitt is attached to the National Marine and Underwater Agency. Despite its bureaucratic name, NUMA is an arm of the U.S. intelligence community, and Pitt is its star operative. If the world is at peril, just add water and you'll get Dirk Pitt. In "Atlantis Found," the water is filling an old gold mine in Colorado, trapping three people in a mysterious underground chamber. Pitt, naturally, swims to the rescue and is swept up in the search for an ancient civilization.

The plot of "Atlantis Found" defies summarization. Cussler puts all of his creative energy into constructing a complex story that races from one action scene to the next. At each step, the stakes get higher until the Earth itself is poised at the precipice of doom. Characterization is not the author's strong suit. The people in his stories are largely a collection of physical descriptions. The initial appearance of the villain in "Atlantis Found" is set at a Buenos Aires opera house, where the bad guy is accompanied by his five sisters.

"When he turned and spoke to his siblings, he smiled, flashing brilliantly white teeth framed by a friendly mouth that found it impossible to turn down in a grimace. The eyes, though, showed no warmth. They stared as if they belonged to a panther gazing over the grasslands in search of prey."

Cussler spends a lot of time describing eyes. Pitt's, we are told repeatedly, are opaline green. There's also a welter of detail about the equipment Pitt uses-makes and models of air tanks, airplanes, boats of all sizes, from outboards to submarines to the four largest ships the world has ever seen. Cussler obviously knows, and loves, the hardware.

In "Atlantis Found," the action careens from Colorado to the South Seas, from South America to the South Pole. The story piles up improbabilities at a furious pace-from an ancient foretelling of global disaster to a nefarious scheme by the sons and daughters of the Third Reich to rule a post-apocalyptic world. Dirk Pitt strides through it all with his granite jaw set and his fists flying.

Cussler isn't above making sly reference to his brethren in the adventure field, nor is he above inserting himself as a character in his own fiction. Such inside jokes serve to alert the reader that the yarn he's spinning is all in good fun and not to be taken seriously (despite a pseudo-scholarly Postscript). His wild surmises about ancient civilizations and futuristic technology may hike up the word count of the book, but they also ratchet up the action. And action is what "Atlantis Found" is all about.

L.D. Meagher is a senior writer at CNN Headline News. He has worked in broadcasting for 30 years.

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