Lost Empire

August 2, 2010
Cussler and Blackwood's second adventure to feature husband-wife treasure hunters Sam and Remi Fargo deviates little from the familiar formula of the first in the series, Spartan Gold. When Sam and Remi find a huge ship's bell on a dive off the Tanzanian coast, they must work to find a way to recover it without running afoul of the Tanzanian government. Meanwhile, Mexican president Quauhtli Garza, a staunch nationalist, knows that this bell comes from a former Confederate ship that sank off the east African coast after the Civil War. Garza fears the discovery of a missing piece of a Quetzalcoatl statuette, which was aboard the ship, will undermine his grip on power. Once Garza dispatches his henchman to Tanzania to deal with the Fargos, the novel devolves into a standard chase thriller. Uninspired dialogue ("I love adventure as much as the next gal, but there's something to be said for good food and a warm bed with clean sheets," Remi tells Sam) doesn't help.

September 1, 2010
This is the second installment (after Spartan Gold, 2009) of Cusslers action-packed new series featuring husband-and-wife treasure-hunters Sam and Remi Fargo, a spunky Nick and Nora for the twenty-first century. Scuba diving off the coast of East Africa, the couple discovers a bell, covered in cryptic carvings, from a long-lost Confederate warship. While they struggle to decode the clues found on the bell, a sinister faction is shadowing them in hopes of also discovering the secret to which the clues lead. Unlike the Fargos, this group does not want the secret uncovered and will kill to keep it hidden, as the discovery would result in a rewrite of the history books. In his inimitable way, Cussler throws everything into the pot: Confederate warships, the Aztecs, the Krakatoa explosion of 1883, pirates, and, in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock, Cussler himself in a cameo appearance. Blackwood, the coauthor, seems to have brought a breath of fresh air to Cusslers usual testosterone-laced style by toning down the traces of xenophobia and misogyny that often permeate the long-in-the-tooth Dirk Pitt series. HIGH DEMAND BACKSTORY: Fans of Mathew Reilly and James Rollins will revel in this treasure-hunting adventure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)