Sea of Greed

September 24, 2018
Kurt Austin and the other members of the National Underwater Marine Agency must once again save the world in bestseller Cussler’s solid 16th NUMA Files novel (after The Rising Sea, also with Brown). In the present, Tessa Franco, a “wealthy and brilliant designer who’d been called a modern-day Howard Hughes,” and Arat Buran, a “shadowy but important player in the oil business,” rediscover a deadly bacteria that feeds on oil and forms a sludge that blocks oil wells, originally found by a secret joint Franco-Israeli research project on a Mediterranean island in 1968. Franco and Buran plan to infect most of the globe’s oil wells with the organisms, which will cause oil prices to soar, whereupon Buran will corner the oil market with his own uninfected wells, and Franco will supply the planet’s energy needs with a new alternative energy device she has invented. Only Austin and company can stop their nefarious plot. Cussler fans know who will win in the end, but it’s always fun to watch the NUMA guys and gals implementing their clever plans. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency.