Arctic Drift (Cussler)

Arctic Drift - Clive Cussler

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CUSSLER NOVELS:

Arctic Drift,
by Clive Cussler

Arctic Drift Book Review

As always, Clive Cussler's latest novel stays right on top of current geopolitical events. Arctic Drift, set in 2011, centers on global warming and the financial crisis.

The bad guy of the story, Mitchell Goyette, is a Canadian energy tycoon with a public facade of green technology and renewable resource businesses. However, his dark underbelly conceals heavy involvement in oil and natural gas.

The United States is facing a financial meltdown, aggravated by the threat of an international boycott if the country does not decrease its carbon dioxide emissions from coal fired power plants. Canada holds the key to America’s salvation in the form or an enormous wealth of natural gas reserves

The sitting American president, who in 2011 is neither Democratic nor Republican but an independent, hopes to use Canadian natural gas to replace coal for producing electricity and even for powering cars converted to run on natural gas.

This desperate American play gets exploited by the industrialist Goyette to the fullest. Officially, he is the hero of the green movement because of his heavy investments in wind power and carbon dioxide sequestering. Unofficially, he holds a major interest in the Athabasca oil sands of Alberta, as well as the entire Melville natural gas field in the Canadian Arctic.

Promising the U.S. government a nearly unlimited supply of the Melville natural gas to help solve the American energy crisis, and consequently also the financial crisis brought on by soaring oil prices, Goyette underhandedly signs a secret deal with the Chinese to instead sell them the gas at 10% above market value, with no intention of keeping his word to the U.S.

(In reality, it seems a little farfetched that the American government would not have had an iron-clad, legally binding, written contract in place for a deal of this magnitude and importance. But it makes for a good story.)

Even so, the backstabbing of the United States as a business-partner is the least of Mitchell Goyette’s shenanigans. He also bribes high ranking Canadian officials, creates toxic waste that kills wildlife and people, pays to have property stolen or vandalized, and for his opposition to be assassinated.

What Goyette does not count on, of course, is Dirk Pitt, the hero of 20 Clive Cussler books, including this latest installment. Arctic Drift is an excellent and seamless co-authorship between Clive Cussler and his son, Dirk Cussler. It is hard to tell the penmanship of one apart from the other throughout the book. And whatever sections Dirk Cussler wrote, he’s done an excellent job of adopting Clive’s inimitable style. (That’s an intentional oxymoron.)

The book is an excellent and thrilling read; perhaps not cover-to-cover on-the-edge-of-your-seat excitement, as some of the older Dirk Pitt adventures. But the book makes up for it with a solid, steady and thoroughly enjoyable story that is brilliantly written, with thugs that are as sharp and capable as they are unscrupulous, and heroes as pure as Arctic snow.

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