Havana Storm

Publishers Weekly 09/29/2014 After 40 years of nautical derring-do, Dirk Pitt is still going strong, as shown in bestseller Cussler’s winning 23rd novel featuring the underwater expert, the sixth coauthored with son Dirk (after 2012’s Poseidon’s Arrow). In 1898, Ellsworth Boyd, a Yale anthropologist who specializes in native Caribbean cultures, arrives in Cuba with something in a crate that he excavated in Jamaica. Unfortunately, Boyd boards the USS Maine with his prize shortly before the warship explodes and sinks in Havana Harbor. More than a century later, Pitt and his two grown children, Summer and her twin brother, Dirk Jr., seek to retrieve Boyd’s mysterious discovery. Subplots aplenty involve venal Cuban politicians, the release of poisonous mercury from the sea bottom, uranium ore going to North Korea, and a fabulous Aztec treasure. Some critics consider Isaac Bell the new go-to Cussler hero, but no one should count out the Pitts and their seagoing gang of adventurers. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency. (Nov.)