Review by Booklist Review
Calculations seem to point to this being popular adventure novelist Cussler's thirty-fourth book, the seventh one written in collaboration with Kemprecos and the seventh one to chronicle the adventures of the NUMA Special Assignments Team. In his latest romp, Cussler is concerned with an ancient Phoenician statue called the Navigator, which was stolen from a Baghdad museum in 900 BCE. The compelling, well-organized plot--taken from a template that works--includes such disparate but ultimately workable elements as a foiled hijacking, a secret scientific project, pirates, a beautiful woman (Her gown's scooped neckline displayed a decolletage that hovered between proper and sexy ), and the heroic machinations of the NUMA sleuths. Without exactly revealing the ending, suffice it to say--or, actually, suffice it to pose the question, Has the NUMA team ever failed in its quest for justice? Read it to make certain you've answered the question correctly. Cussler's multitude of fans will undoubtedly eat up this new novel just as they have previous ones. --George Cohen Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Fans of action-hero Kurt Austin of the National Underwater and Maritime Agency expect imaginative plotting, but it never comes down the chute in this seventh NUMA Files novel from bestseller Cussler and Shamus-winner Kemprecos (after Polar Shift). Austin and his team are hunting icebergs when they chance upon a pirate raid aimed at stealing a priceless Phoenician antiquity launched by a stereotypical megalomaniacal villain, Viktor Baltazar, who believes he's a descendant of King Solomon. Baltazar and Austin joust continually (once, literally!) over the antique, which may be connected to the lost ark of the covenant, Thomas Jefferson and the suspicious death of Meriwether Lewis. Sequences including the attempted human sacrifice of the requisite gorgeous female U.N. investigator are all too predictable, and the writing ("The Filipino's lips curved like slices of liverwurst in a frying pan") is often less than Cussler's best. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The NUMA team is back, trying to figure out why anyone would kill for a little statue stolen years ago from the Baghdad Museum. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A super-evil, swarthy zillionaire locks horns with the super-good, fabulously resourceful Kurt Austin (Polar Shift, 2005, etc.) of the National Underwater and Maritime Agency (NUMA). It seems there has been yet another age-old conspiracy to cover up a truth which would rock the religious world. This tale is based on the possibility that the Phoenicians, master mariners of the ancient world, were repeat visitors to North America, sailing nearly to Harrisburg, Pa., and on the further possibility that one of those voyages involved a treasure so important that it was necessary to secrete the object not far from what would be the Pennsylvania Statehouse, where it might have rested for eternity were it not for the restless curiosity of President Thomas Jefferson, or for the avaricious lust of cruel, present-day international villain Viktor Baltazar. Baltazar has inserted himself into the life and work of fiery, spunky, Italo-Ethiopian UNESCO employee Carina Mechadi, a woman totally and passionately dedicated to the restoration of Iraqi antiquities dispersed in the chaos of war. The ruthless fiend desperately wants his hands on the ancient statue of a Phoenician mariner that Carina plans to exhibit. Baltazar's brutal efforts to snatch the statue in the middle of the Atlantic put Carina in the way of a Fate Worse Than Death. Fortunately, NUMA's number one agent Kurt Austin just happens to be in the nautical neighborhood, where he has been lassoing a gigantic iceberg, and he is more than capable of overpowering Baltazar's goons. Mechadi and Austin, mutually attracted, team up to find out what's so interesting about that statue, embroiling them in Baltazar's machinations from the Bosphorus to Chesapeake Bay. Those machinations include tilting on horseback. No kidding. A small--very small--step up from Saturday morning adventure cartoons. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
