Review - Inca Gold

Title: Inca Gold
Author: Clive Cussler

Two archeologists diving at a site in Central America get in trouble underwater. Who should come to the rescue but Dirk Pitt and his partner. Before long, they are in search of the greatest treasure of gold ever, secreted during the final days of the Inca empire. But Pitt and his friends are not the only ones searching for it. A ruthless organization devoted to stealing and selling ancient artifacts might very well be the end of Dirk and his associates.

I had never read a Clive Cussler book, but on our trip to move Sarah & Troy in to their new apartment, we visited Dave & Amy, and Cussler is a favorite of Dave's. He recommended, if I wanted to try one, Inca Gold would be a good choice. It was.

The first 150 pages were non-stop action, and in that respect reminded me of a Spielberg film. The fact that Dirk Pitt and his friends were searching for lost artifacts naturally brings comparisons to Indiana Jones, and there certainly are parallels. I don't know how an Indiana Jones novel would go, but I suspect it would be smaller and much less researched, though. Through the efforts of the NUMA team, we learn a great deal about the history of Central and South America, as well as the capabilities of various investigative technologies. Oh, I suspect that some of the tech used in the book were science fiction at the time, but I have little doubt that today's agencies could have the kind of visualization and modeling software they used to predict the location of a sunken ship, for example.

I enjoyed the action, I enjoyed the interaction of Pitt's team -- in some ways, they reminded me more of Doc Savage and his friends than of Indiana Jones, who was primarily a loner. For an action/adventure story, it was what I wanted. I will probably read another one.

And I will put "Sahara" on my Netflix queue for a second viewing, since that movie was based on a Dirk Pitt novel, and now I want to put it in context.