Iceberg is an early adventure novel by Clive Cussler and features Major Dirk Pitt of the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Cussler has been quite an acclaimed author in the adventure genre for decades. This novel was first published in 1975.
A luxury yacht frozen in in ice is found in the North Atlantic. Dirk Pitt is able to board and found that the crew was burned alive while at their posts. Pitt finds himself at odds with dangerous Russian crime bosses and few other nefarious characters. He loses a friend in the process and takes a nasty beating a time or two. Nothing that Major Pitt can’t handle.
I think I need to accept the likelihood that I am not going to be a Clive Cussler fan. The story had some promising elements such as a ship trapped in ice and full of corpses. How could that go wrong? It’s not that Cussler is a bad writer here. I just found Pitt to be a pretty standard action hero without much nuance or eccentricities to make him all that riveting. Of course, this is only the third entry into a very long series. I don’t begrudge Cussler his overall success and popularity, but I have some doubts that this novel was major contributing factor to all of that. The novel is merely an adequate diversion.
Next up, Tim Major has made another visit to 221 B Baker Street and presents a new Sherlock Holmes novel entitled The Defaced Men.
Reviews, Musings, and Other Things... 