Arctic Drift (Dirk Pitt Series #20) Book

Clive Cussler has penned a life's work of novels about Dirk Pitt and NUMA. Most of the novels start the same way. Cussler tells a tale about some ancient well known historical disaster, or made up disaster, then ties a modern day search to find something in connection with the past.

The earlier novels were more action packed, as Dirk Pitt and his trusty sidekick Al Giordano fell into various situations. Yet the action was only part of the story as Cussler's books were always more about Pitt and Giordano's ability to solve puzzles. Raise the Titanic, is a perfect example of the Cussler's thriller.

Recently, Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels have not been solely about Dirk Pitt. Cussler has introduced Pitt's children -- Dirk Jr and Summer, who have also been part of the main characters of the novels. Jack Dahlgren, Rudi Gunn, and others from the NUMA universe have become more prominent characters and Dirk Pitt is not as involved in the total story.

This novel starts with a long narative whose starting off point is the events surrounding the Franklin mission to find a way through the Northwest Passage, which ended in disaster. It then quickly moves to a modern day evildoer, a Canadian industrialist, Moyette, who with his hired gun Clay Zak, is using money and guns to bully his way to control the Artic, and with blackmail and friends in high places and masquerading ships starts a tense situation between the USA and Canada. A canadian ice camp is attacked by what looks like an American ship and the Canadians seize American sailors on another ship.

In this backdrop, the first quarter of the book finds Summer Pitt and Dirk Pitt Jr joining forces with Trevor Miller, the brother of a dead sailor as they try to find out what is going on with one of Moyette's industiral bases. Meanwhile, as the political situation escalates into near war, Dirk Pitt learns of promising new research using a rare element that could go a long way to solve America's energy problems. The only known source of the rare element, however, appears to be in the Artic. Zak also learns of the same source and the two men in separate ships go after the source of the rare element.

Although not as fun as the earlier Pitt adventures, this novel, with its political situation and whole host of new characters and old is a good addition to the Pitt saga.