If this book had been part of another series, I would have given it three stars, but I expect better form any works associated with the Clive Cussler name. It marvels me that this state of art technology ship has an outer shell of an old, rusty, filthy, and SMELLY tramp steamer. The narrator, soon established as Elliot Chase, then zooms out to address the reader directly, introducing the players—most importantly movie star Lana Farrar. The primary antagonists are two businessmen named Hakobyan and Katrakis, one Armenian and the other Greek, who have known each other for more than 50 years.

A few quibbles, first, the pace in the middle because of the details that almost turn this adventure into a geopolitical thriller. Mike Maden seems a capable author, but I'm realizing this series isn't ever going to evolve further and probably should have ended a few books ago. Although a good read, I could tell this was not a book written by Cussler and I had to downgrade to 4 stars.Clive Cussler was the author of more than eighty books in five bestselling series, including Dirk Pitt®, NUMA Files®, Oregon Files®, Isaac Bell®, and Sam and Remi Fargo®.

From the start it seemed like I was in a Star Trek story, bring on a new character just to kill them off. Cabrillo’s Corporation of mercenaries may have finally met its match in The Pipeline—a criminal syndicate passed down from father to son across generations. S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows.Mike Maden, one of the Tom Clancy Estate's collection of legacy authors, knows his way around the geopolitical thriller genre. The atmosphere of the novel, set mostly on this wild Greek island, echoes strongly the classical tragedies of Greece. This time, Juan Carrillo and his team are on the trail of a drug lord and a massive drug smuggling setup.

They will steal a 100-megaton bomb and explode it underwater in the Bosporus to cause a tsunami that will “drown sixteen million dirty Turks in a flood of their own radioactive bathwater. Michaelides seems also to be dipping into the world of Edgar Allan Poe, offering an unreliable narrator who feels more like a literary exercise. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.Like millions of others, I first became a Tom Clancy fan after reading The Hunt for Red October, and began my published fiction career in the same techno-thriller genre, starting with DRONE and the sequels, BLUE WARRIOR, DRONE COMMAND and DRONE THREAT. Maden has served as a political consultant and campaign manager in state and national elections, and hosted his own local weekly radio show.

I'm not familiar with Maden's work, but he did a fine job keeping the familiar feel of all the unique characters in the Oregon Files. The team is left without a choice but to track the deadly fentanyl-laced meth from Mexico to its unknown destination in Europe. A group that sits with its finger on the trigger of a torpedo so deadly it could level entire cities. Though he isn't present in every scene, he conveys each piece of the story leading up to the murder as if he were an omniscient narrator, capable of accessing every character's interior perspective.One example is that Stonie and Murph are supposed to be best buds, solving problems together and feeding off each other. Previous installments integrated multiple plots so smoothly but this time around everything felt unrelated and disconnected.