By Megan Andres, Grand Rapids Public Library, Seymour Branch
Serpent, Clive Cussler’s first National Water & Marine Agency Files book, gives readers a new hero for a new age. Kurt Austin has a master’s degree in Systems Management from the University of Washington and much experience in marine recovery. In Serpent, Austin and his Special Assignments Team of Joe Zavala and Drs. Paul and Gamay Trout find themselves conquering a mystery of legendary caliber.
“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue”; Austin and his team soon find that there were a lot of things left out of the popular children’s rhyme. With the help of Nina Kirov, the team investigates industrialist Don Halcon. Halcon is dedicated to carving a new country out of the southwestern United States. To do so, Halcon needs a priceless pre-Columbian antiquity buried in the battered remains of the sunken Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria, and he’s prepared to do anything to get it.
Admiral James Sandecker, from Dirk Pitt fame, sends Austin and his team all over the world to stop Halcon before he can get his hands on the artifact. Austin and Zavala soon find themselves diving the Andrea Doria itself in order to gain access to a secured vault left behind when the liner sank fifty years before.
With a hefty dose of actual historical fact and fictional license, Cussler dishes out a wonderful first episode in the lives of the new heroes of NUMA. The subsequent novels in the series, Blue Gold, Fire Ice, White Death, Lost City and Polar Shift, all follow Austin as he pursues a life of intrigue and danger. Fans of Cussler’s Dirk Pitt will find much to love in Kurt Austin.
