Journey of the Pharaohs

January 13, 2020
Bestseller Cussler’s lively 17th NUMA Files novel (after 2018’s Sea of Greed, also with Brown) finds Kurt Austin, the director of special projects for the U.S. government’s National Underwater and Marine Agency, on the coast of Scotland, where he and sidekick Joe Zavala witness a trawler smashing against the rocks. Kurt and Joe rescue the crew and pull fragments of a stone tablet with Egyptian hieroglyphics from the sinking boat, along with a logbook from 1927 kept by a transatlantic pilot who crashed in Spain. Some murderous artifact smugglers, who belong to an organization called the Bloodstone Group, want these relics back. When interpreted by a British professor, these discoveries lead Kurt and Joe and their new partner, MI5 agent Morgan Manning, on a chase across Europe to America, where they end up in a treasure-filled cave in the Grand Canyon with Bloodstone agents hot on their heels. The twist ending fits neatly into the Cussler canon. Series fans will be pleased. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency.

February 1, 2020
Rumors of lost Egyptian treasure spark high adventure in this 17th in the NUMA series featuring oceanographer Kurt Austin and his crew (Sea of Greed, 2018, etc.). Over 3,000 years ago, grave robbers sail away with loot from a pharaoh's tomb. In 1927, Jake Melbourne and his plane disappear in his attempt at a trans-Atlantic flight. In the present day, arms merchants known as the Bloodstone Group have taken to stealing antiquities. They are looking for a "treasure both vast and glorious" that hieroglyphics say was shipped down the Nile and out of Egypt, perhaps even west across the Atlantic. (Holy scurvy! That must've been a lot of hard rowing!) The criminals are known to MI5 as "very dangerous people" and "merchants selling death." Perfectly willing to kill everyone in their way, they are aided by mechanical crows and Fydor and Xandra, nasty sibling assassins jointly called the Toymaker. Such are the foes faced by Austin and his team from the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Of course, Austin has no interest in profit; he will gladly leave the ancient riches wherever they are. Action arrives early and often, and the failed pre-Lindbergh flight fits in neatly. Cussler and Brown concoct a nifty plot with disparate, sometimes over-the-top twists that will make even hardcore adventure fans say "Wow!" Expect claustrophobic gunfights, aerial combat, a life-threatening flood, messages from the dead, coffins of gold--and a vintage classic car, because why not? "We're going to steal the greatest deposit of Egyptian treasure the world has ever known," brags the evil mastermind. But he'll have to climb over the series hero's dead body first, which--no plot spoiler here--ain't gonna happen. This is fast-paced, nonstop fun. Cussler fans will gobble it up.

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