Mirage

September 30, 2013
In this rousing ninth Oregon Files adventure (after 2011’s The Jungle) from bestseller Cussler and Du Brul, series hero Juan Cabrillo’s attempt to rescue old pal Yuri Borodin from a super-max Siberian prison goes bad. Yuri dies after uttering “Tesla,” a reference to Nikola Tesla, the mysterious Serb who invented alternating-current electricity and who is alleged to have developed a number of secret weapons, including a death ray, an earthquake machine, and an invisibility field. Russian fleet admiral Pytor Kenin, “perhaps the second-most corrupt man on the planet,” has formed a private army and is using Tesla’s secret technology for nefarious purposes. A subplot involves an effort to secure a legendary shipping container with a billion dollars leftover from the second invasion of Iraq, but soon everyone is back to the main mission—trying to thwart Kenin. The conclusion is the usual Cussler nail-biter, though no one ever really expects Juan and his crew to come in second-best. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency.

October 1, 2013
Cussler and Du Brul (The Jungle, 2011, etc.) draw another adventure from The Oregon Files. The book opens with a James Bond action sequence. Disguised as a mobster, Juan Cabrillo infiltrates a Siberian prison intending to engineer Adm. Yuri Borodin's escape, courtesy of C-4 secreted in an artificial leg. Bang! Next comes a high-tension rope ride from a remotely piloted chopper to a souped-up snowmobile. It's a $25 million payoff, but Borodin ends up dead. The admiral's last words--"Aral....Eerie boat....Tesla"--send Cabrillo down a dangerous trail. Borodin was imprisoned by a corrupt Russian admiral, Pytor Kenin, and apparently, Kenin's up to no good in Uzbekistan. Cabrillo's chairman of the Corporation, the go-anywhere, get-it-done CIA-style group on call when things go off kilter. The Corporation's headquarters is the Oregon, a seemingly derelict freighter secretly equipped with everything from military-grade weapons and electronics to magnetohydrodynmic engines and an English butler. With shootouts, knife fights and supertech spying, Cabrillo and company battle from the Aral Sea to the U.S., there discovering a wreck that was George Westinghouse's yacht. It disappeared more than a century ago while participating in an experiment carried out by Westinghouse's friend, the eccentric genius Nikola Tesla. With a detour to rescue a billion dollars of purloined Iraqi aid money being smuggled to Indonesia--a book-worthy story itself--the slam-bang action sails along, pausing occasionally to introduce characters forgettable--technogeek or ex-military Oregon crew members--and memorable--L'Enfant; the horribly burn-scarred criminal Mr. Fixit. Cabrillo and company confront assassins, torpedo duels and undersea rescues, decipher Tesla's invention of an optical cloaking device and then battle the Serb genius' weaponized technology. That means destroying the Tesla-based device-equipped stealth ship tasked to sink an U.S. aircraft carrier en route to prevent Chinese-Japanese hostilities over islands sitting atop an oil patch. Above-average action from Cussler.

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April 1, 2012

Juan Cabrillo is back, trying to make sense of the Philadelphia Experiment. In that little 1943 escapade, a U.S. destroyer was deliberately sent into a misted-over field of electromagnetic radiation--and promptly vanished. But now evidence of the experiment has hauntingly returned, with possible nasty consequences for U.S. security.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2013
The latest Oregon Files adventure opens with Juan Cabrillo breaking into a Russian supermax prison to free a friend, the man who had helped outfit Cabrillo's ship, the Oregon, with its high-tech hardware. Shot during the escape, the man soon dies but not before uttering his cryptic last words, about an eerie boat, the Aral Sea, and a name: Tesla. Cabrillo soonone might say almost too slickly soonfinds the boat, a pleasure craft built in Pennsylvania for George Westinghouse, who had been a big booster of inventor Nikola Tesla's alternating current (AC) electrical system in the late nineteenth century. That pleasure boat vanished at sea in 1902. But what did a mysterious blue cloud have to do with the disappearance, and how did the boat turn up in the Aral Sea, 10,000 miles from where it vanished? And what does any of this have to do with a modern-day superweapon that could change the face of the world forever? The Oregon Files stories don't represent Cussler's finest work, but fans can depend on them to deliver action and adventure, if not full-bodied characters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)