Recap / Dirk Pitt Adventures

Dirk Pitt

Twenty-two books so far. Co-written with his son Dirk from the eighteenth book onwards. Pitt has been described as a combination of James Bond, Angus MacGyver and Indiana Jones.

Written by Clive Cussler alone

• The Mediterranean Caper (1973): Dirk Pitt and his childhood friend/sidekick Al Giordino contend with a World War I Albatross biplane which attacked cities and eventually the World War II plane he was on, then disappears just as quickly. Along the way he gets to encounter a psychotic ex-Nazi, a narcotics agent, a Greek strongman, an amateur commando group, and a beautiful double agent.
• Iceberg (1975): A Coast Guard patrol plane mysteriously disappears after encountering a massive iceberg with a warship concealed inside. Dirk flies to Iceland to investigate who could possibly want to conceal this discovery.
• Raise the Titanic! (1976): Dirk is sent to obtain the extremely rare element "byzantium" from the RMS Titanic, needed to fuel a powerful anti-missile defense system covering the whole USA — by raising it. Easy enough a job for him — except he has to contend with Soviet interests and a hurricane.
• Vixen 03 (1978): Dirk rewrites history books when he discovers the remains of a plane carrying canisters of a powerful virus, long thought to have vanished in the Pacific, actually lying beneath a frozen lake in Colorado. But all is not well — two such canisters are under an African terrorist group's possession, and they are about to unknowingly wage biological warfare on Washington, DC itself.
• Night Probe! (1981): America is facing an energy crisis. When a beautiful naval commander discovers a reference to a long-forgotten 1914 top-secret treaty between America and Britain, long-thought to have been lost somewhere in eastern Canada, both countries scramble to find both documents — America sends Dirk, while Britain sends former SIS agent Brian Shaw. Both men clash against each other in a battle of wits, with the future of America, Canada and Britain at stake.
• Pacific Vortex! (1983): Reported written in the 1970s, but not published before. The first chronological Dirk Pitt adventure, where he was tasked with finding a nuclear submarine which inexplicably disappeared off the coast of Oahu, while being followed by mysterious assassins — and traps him in the arms of Summer Moran, an exotic assassin.
• Deep Six (1984): The discovery of a crab boat full of dead bodies drives Dirk to investigate its origins, tracing it all the way to an ambitious Korean shipping company which has struck a pact with the impoverished Soviet Union to mind-control the President, Vice President, Senate President and House Speaker of the United States into doing their bidding.
• Cyclops (1986): The disappearance of a blimp containing an American research searching for a collier sunken off the Cuban coast — and its reappearance in Florida containing dead Soviet scientists — serves as the impetus for Dirk to embark on another adventure, discovering the existence of a secret base on the moon and an audacious Soviet plot to take out their former ally — Fidel Castro himself.
• Treasure (1988): While on an exploration in Greenland, Dirk and Al rescue Hala Kamil, the new UN Secretary-General, from a hijacked plane that crashed on the same area — then discovers a Roman ship detailing a secret mission to hide surviving treasures from the Library of Alexandria. This brings him to a direct conflict with two aspiring dictators from Egypt and Mexico, both with their designs connected to this lost cache.
• Dragon (1990): A rising Japanese imperialism and the discovery of a third atomic bomb meant to serve as backup for those which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki drove Dirk to stem the tide of rising belligerence before it reasserts its dominance in the Far East.
• Sahara (1992): Dirk's rescue of a beautiful UN scientist intersects with an ecological disaster in the making to lead him to Mali, whose dictator is in league with a shady industrialist. As they fight to uncover the plans of this ruthless duo, they will discover a long-lost legend and things that force them to rethink history's view of a certain famous American Civil War personage.
• Inca Gold (1994): Dirk rescues a research team investigating rumors of a massive trove of Inca treasures, some of which were already discovered by Sir Francis Drake during the 16th century, only to find himself in the crosshairs of a powerful smuggling syndicate.
• Shock Wave (1996): A wave of sonar-related deaths in Antarctica puts Dirk on a rescue mission, only to get caught in a tragic family feud involving an Australian diamond mining company and its patriarch's rebellious daughter, whose two sons her father kidnapped.
• Flood Tide (1997): A rising wave of illegal Chinese immigrants being shipped across the world by a wealthy tycoon sends Dirk and Al on a mission to stem this trade — in the process discovering the resting place of a ship containing treasures salvaged by Chiang Kai-shek as he fled China in 1949... amongst which were the bones of the missing "Peking Man".
• Atlantis Found (1999): Dirk, Al and Rudy discover a pair of black obsidian skulls, all the while eluding mysterious assassins. Both skulls point to the existence of a powerful prehistoric global superpower destroyed by a meteor fall — a catastrophe which was supposedly about to repeat itself in the present, and one which a group of Nazi stragglers are more than willing to exploit.
• Valhalla Rising (2001): Dirk and his allies save the passengers of a technologically-advanced cruise ship, which puts them in the crosshairs of a vicious oil magnate and his death squad. Even as they struggle to elude the assassins and stop the villain's plans, Dirk discovers not only its connections with a thought-lost Viking settlement on the Hudson River and another technologically-advanced ship from the recent past — but also that he has children with Summer, whom he thought he lost long ago: Dirk Jr. and Summer.
• Trojan Odyssey (2003): Dirk Sr. has assumed directorship of NUMA after his boss, Admiral Sandecker, ascends to Vice President of the United States. But when his twin children are caught in a storm while on an underwater expedition, he and Al naturally set off to their rescue — only to open a can of worms involving a black tide, a mysterious assassin named "Spectre", a group of Celts desirous of world domination, and a startling truth that may rewrite what history knew about The Trojan War.

Co-written by Clive and Dirk Cussler

• Black Wind (2004): The discovery of Japanese kamikaze submarines containing toxic weapons somewhere in the South China Sea prompts an ambitious South Korean businessman to use the weapons to blackmail America and the whole world. Dirk and his children set out to track this ambitious businessman and his hitman — all the while discovering a conspiracy involving a certain "hermit kingdom".
• Treasure of Khan (2006): An ambitious Mongolian tycoon has stolen an earthquake machine and is about to go on a quest to restore the Mongol Empire. Dirk and his children set out to stop his plans, while discovering the truth about a failed expedition by Genghis Khan to Japan.
• Arctic Drift (2008): A series of inexplicable deaths off the coast of British Columbia threaten to pit both America and Canada against each other. Dirk, Dirk Jr., Summer and Al travel to attempt to prevent a shooting war between both countries while trying to find links between the deaths, a failed 19th-century expedition to the Northwest Passage, and a formula for artificial photosynthesis perceived as a solution to global warming, while contending with a corruption ring within Ottawa.
• Crescent Dawn (2010): An ambitious fundamentalist group is setting up to restore the Ottoman Empire. Dirk and his children are on an adventure to discover links between this group, the sinking of a Roman ship during the 300s, the sinking of a British warship on the North Sea, and artifacts which could change the way the world sees Christianity and Islam.
• Poseidon's Arrow (2012): America has developed a powerful, incredibly fast submarine — but part of its blueprint is missing, and its project chief is found dead. As always, Dirk and his children investigate links between this super sub, inexplicable burnings of entire ship crews, and a missing Italian World War II submarine.
• Havana Storm (2014): Dirk Jr. and Summer are on the trail of an Aztec stone which may provide clues to the whereabouts of a fabled treasure trove, believed to be lost at sea together with the USS Maine in 1898, whose sinking triggered the Spanish-American War. Soon they run into their father, now facing his own troubles when a simple investigation into a toxic outbreak over the Caribbean Sea gets him involved in Cuba's post-Castro power plays. Soon enough father and children are to be forced to fight for the future of both America, Cuba and the world.
• Odessa Sea (2016): While searching for an Ottoman ship buried in the Black Sea, Dirk and Giordino stumble upon a ship full of dead bodies and the smell of sulfur in the air. Barely escaping the ensuing explosion, the NUMA crew ends up discovering more than what they intended as they get caught up in the world of nuclear arms smugglers and the simmering conflict between Ukraine and Russia, all connected to a Cold War-era bomber with a dangerous payload and chronicles of the desperate attempts of the House of Romanov in the 1ate 1910s to cling on to power in a Russia spiraling out of control.
• Celtic Empire (2019): A routine investigation in South America turns deadly when Dirk stumbles upon news of the spread of a mysterious disease, which leads him to Scotland for answers, while Dirk Jr. and Summer are forced to fight for their lives after a discovery in Egypt made them marked for death. These seemingly unrelated incidents somehow link back to Ireland and the story of an Egyptian princess forced to flee from the armies of her father three thousand years ago.

The NUMA Files

A Spin-Off featuring professional soldier Kurt Austin, his sidekick Joe Zavala, and the Special Projects Team. Co-written with Paul Kemprecos for the first eight books, then Graham Brown for the rest.

Co-written by Clive Sussler and Paul Kemprecos

• Serpent (1999): Austin saves scientist Nina Kirov from an ambush as she unearth a headstone off the coast of Morocco proving that Christopher Columbus may not have been the first medieval European to discover the Americas. Along the way Kurt, Nina and the NUMA team set out to stop a wealthy Texan industrialist from carving his own nation stretching from California to Mexico, all the while seeking connections between a precolonial treasure found in an Italian shipwreck off the coast of Massachusetts and Columbus' fifth, unknown voyage in search of a magnificent treasure.
• Blue Gold (2000): Kurt investigates mass deaths of whales off the east Mexican coast, while another NUMA team investigates rumors of a technologically-advanced Venezuelan tribe led by a "white goddess". Both teams, however, realize that both may have something to do with a Californian tycoon's ambitious scheme to monopolize all the world's freshwater resources. Kurt must now seek this "goddess", who may have the key to a formula for turning saltwater into freshwater, before it's too late.
• Fire Ice (2002): While on a public-relations jaunt on Russia's Black Sea coast, Kurt learns that Mikhail Razov, mobster and Romanov pretender, has been buying off government facilities and utilities, including a mothballed submarine, for his goal of mining volatile underwater solid methane deposits with which he can usurp Moscow while terrorizing America into not interfering. Kurt has no choice but ally with his former nemesis, ex-KGB agent Vladimir Petrov, to stop Razov before he causes a drastic shift of the world's balance of power.
• White Death (2003): A clash between radical environmentalists and a Danish cruiser drove Kurt and Joe to rescue a handful of men trapped in the crossfire, only to get caught in a greater conspiracy led by a multinational corporation seeking to rule the high seas through staging an environmental catastrophe — one only Kurt and Joe can stop.
• Lost City (2004): Kurt and his team investigates links between a corpse found frozen high up the Alps, inexplicable disappearances in a Greek laboratory, and an enzyme which can prolong life found in a sunken city in the Atlantic Ocean.
• Polar Shift (2005): The NUMA team travels to stop an anti-globalization group from using a technology discovered by an eccentric Hungarian scientist during World War II to reverse the world's poles, realizing it cannot be undone.
• The Navigator (2007): Kurt and Joe are caught in the middle of an archaeological war after rescuing a UN agent investigating a struggle involving a Phoenician statue stolen from the Baghdad Museum. The adventure brings the team through the mysteries of King Solomon's treasures, a bunch of documents encoded by Thomas Jefferson, and a top-secret scientific project.
• Medusa (2009): A Bermudan bathysphere is bombed, and Kurt has to save its stranded visitors, including Joe. But from there he and his team has just opened a Pandora's box of hideous medical experiments connected to a Chinese crime syndicate and a powerful virus that can kill millions — all connected to the sudden disappearance of a Micronesian laboratory researching a rare type of jellyfish.

'Co-written by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown

• Devil's Gate (2011): Kurt, Joe and the NUMA Special Assignments Team investigate the inexplicable explosion of both a Japanese cruise ship and a pirate ship off the coast of the Azores islands. They end up having to contend with the ambitious new dictator of Sierra Leone, who has hatched an audacious plan to extort the world's nations.
• The Storm (2012): The destruction of a NUMA vessel by a swarm of black particles in the Indian Ocean means a more personal quest for the Special Assignments Team, only to discover an even greater plot to forcibly shift the climate.
• Zero Hour (2013): A scientist manages to find a way to harness the power of zero-point energy through his invention — however, his intentions are far from noble as he sets out on a personal quest for revenge. And unless Kurt, Joe and the NUMA SPT finds two of his machines — one underground, the other buried at sea — he will stop at nothing to tear the world that shunned him apart, plate by plate....
• Ghost Ship (2014): A bungled yacht rescue left Austin with fragmented memories as to the mission. Together with Zavala, he pieces together the truth, only to find himself involved in the web of state-sponsored organized cybercrime.
• The Pharaoh's Secret (2015): When an ambitious Egyptian power broker manipulates his way into gaining a foothold on a strategic Saharan aquifer and a plant extract said to have the ability to kill the living and resurrect the dead, Kurt and Joe travel to discover the truth behind his ambitions, in the process also uncovering the mystery of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld.
• Nighthawk (2017): Russia and China's scramble over a state-of-the-art aircraft that crashed on the South Pacific is the least of America's worries because the aircraft so happens to carry a payload of exotic matter extracted from the upper reaches of the atmosphere and stored at sub-zero temperatures which, if thawed, could unleash an unimaginable catastrophe. Austin, Zavala and their crew join the race across South America which will lead them all the way to an icy mountain lake believed to be the birthplace of the Inca people.
• Sea of Greed (2018): With the world's oil supplies drying and stock markets plummeting, a deadly explosion at three oil rigs on the Gulf of Mexico leads a desperate U.S. government to send Austin and co. to investigate, the crew discover that the world's oil fields may have been infected with a bacteria that is consuming fossil fuel, long thought to have vanished along with a pair of submarines deep in the Mediterranean. The crew travel halfway round the world to stop the bacteria from spreading, even as they cross paths with a brilliant alternative-energy advocate who may have a few skeletons in the closet.
• The Rising Sea (2018): An alarming rise in the world's sea levels sends Austin, Zavala and their crew to investigate the matter. What they find in the depths of the East China Sea is a rare alloy, which puts them on the crosshairs of an assassin too destructive even for the most powerful Yakuza families to tolerate, forcing the crew on a race across Japan and prevent a plot to radically shift the balance of power in East Asia and beyond.

The Oregon Files

A series involving an advanced freighter and the mercenary group known as the Corporation, led by former CIA agent Juan Cabrillo, who first appeared in Flood Tide.