As always, Clive Cussler’s latest novel stays right on top of current geopolitical events. Arctic Drift, set in 2011, centers on global warming and the financial crisis.
The bad guy of the story, Mitchell Goyette, is a Canadian energy tycoon with a public facade of green technology and renewable resource businesses. However, his dark underbelly conceals heavy involvement in oil and natural gas.
Meanwhile, the United States faces an unprecedented financial crisis, made worse by the international threat of a trade boycott if the country does not find a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions from coal burning power plants. Canada, with its vast resources of natural gas, may hold the key to saving its southern neighbor.
The American president in 2011, when the story takes place, plans to use natural gas from Canada to replace both coal and automobile gasoline, thereby killing two birds with one stone. The nation would make huge savings by cutting down on expensive oil imports, and simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions by burning a cleaner fuel.
But of course, this desperate play by the U.S. gets exploited by Goyette to the fullest. Publicly, he’s a hero to the environmentalists because of his role in developing wind power and finding solutions to carbon dioxide sequestration. Out of the public eye and unknown to all but a few, Goyette has major holdings in the Melville gas field of the Canadian Arctic, as well as the Athabasca oil sands of Alberta.
The unconscionable Goyette strikes a deal with the American government to sell nearly limitless supplies of Melville natural gas at market value, which would help the U.S. avert the escalating energy crisis, a financial meltdown, and an international trade boycott. But when Goyette is able to secretly work out a better deal with China, he does not hesitate to break his agreement with the U.S. and leave the southern neighbor high and dry.
(In reality, it seems a little farfetched that the American government would not have had an iron-clad, legally binding, written contract in place for a deal of this magnitude and importance. But it makes for a good story.)
Even so, the backstabbing of the United States as a business-partner is the least of Mitchell Goyette’s shenanigans. He also bribes high ranking Canadian officials, creates toxic waste that kills wildlife and people, pays to have property stolen or vandalized, and for his opposition to be assassinated.
The only fly in Goyette’s ointment goes by the name of Dirk Pitt, Clive Cussler’s action hero of 35 years. In the end Pitt prevails over Goyette, and multiple crises are averted.
Arctic Drift is an excellent and seamless co-authorship between Clive Cussler and his son, Dirk Cussler. It is hard to tell the penmanship of one apart from the other throughout the book. Whatever sections Dirk Cussler wrote, he did an excellent job of adopting Clive’s inimitable style. (That’s an intentional oxymoron.)
All in all, Arctic Drift is an excellent action thriller. It’s does not have the cover-to-cover non-stop action of some of the older Dirk Pitt novels by Cussler, but it does have quite enough action, plus the story line is brilliant and intriguing and keeps you wanting to read more. And as always in Dirk Pitt’s world, the villains are as clever as they are evil, and the heroes as pure as Arctic snow.
Britt Hellman resides in Western North Carolina with her spouse and three children. She runs her own copywriting business from home. Clive Cussler has been one of her favorite authors since she read his Trojan Odyssey in 2003. She writes reviews like this one on Arctic Drift for the fun of sharing that excitement.