“Lost Empire”   

   by  Clive Cussler w/ Grant Blackwood

Review #189

A Sam and Remi Fargo Mystery

 When Sam and Remi find a huge ship's bell, covered in cryptic carvings, on a dive off the Tanzanian coast, they must work to find a way to recover it without running afoul of the Tanzanian government.

Meanwhile, Mexican president Quauhtli Garza, a staunch nationalist, knows that this bell comes from a former Confederate ship that sank off the east African coast after the Civil War. Garza fears the discovery of a missing piece of a Quetzalcoatl statuette, which was aboard the ship, will undermine his grip on power. Once Garza dispatches his henchman to Tanzania to deal with the Fargos, the novel devolves into a standard chase thriller.

In his inimitable way, Cussler throws everything into the pot: Confederate warships, the Aztecs, the Krakatoa explosion of 1883, pirates, and, in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock, Cussler himself in a cameo appearance.

This was an excellent adventure but, the Dirk Pitt series is still my favorite of Cussler’s books.