Marauder by Clive Cussler and Boyd Morrison

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on November 10, 2020

Clive Cussler was a prolific and popular writer when he was alive. He died earlier this year. Judging by the ongoing production of the Robert Ludlum and Robert Parker factories, death doesn’t stand in the way of churning out new books. Marauder is co-authored by Boyd Morrison. The degree to which Cussler contributed to the book is unclear. Since most (maybe all but the first) of Cussler’s “Oregon Files” novels were co-authored (several with Morrison), it probably doesn’t matter.

Marauder is the name of a trimaran that bad guys have equipped with a plasma weapon. It battles Captain Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the newly refurbished Oregon who have abundant weapons of their own. Shootouts ensue.

Marauder doesn’t even attempt a plausible plot. It isn’t the kind of novel that really needs one, although thrillers tend to be better when they fall within the realm of realism. This is basically a novelized action movie. Since the thrills come from the action, giving much thought to why the thrills are happening is perhaps an unwelcome distraction. And yes, the story is entirely predictable. Well, we wouldn’t want the bad guys to win, would we?

The premise involves the Chinese, the current boogeymen for people who need to believe in boogymen. Angus Polk, a senior analyst in the Australian Department of Defence, is married to April Jin, an intelligence officer in the Australian navy. They both served time for selling military secrets to a Chinese company owned by Lu Yang. Although Yang recently died, he spread some money around and got his two spies an early release from prison. Now he wants to leave his vast fortune to Polk and Jin on the condition that they carry out his final plan.

Yang has whipped up a new weapon, a gas that paralyzes people. If an antidote is not administered within one week, the paralysis becomes permanent. Yang’s plan is to paralyze everyone in Sydney and sell the antidote to rich people. More nefarious, however, is the notion that Australia will be flooded with Chinese caretakers for all the people who don’t get an antidote. This influx of Chinese will somehow give the Chinese a hidden army in Australia. Unless, of course, Australia opts to import caretakers from the Philippines or other Asian countries that have a long history of training caretakers. Details, details.

As the bad guys move forward, a bunch of people — including one of Juan’s team — become paralyzed, giving Juan and crew a mere week to find the antidote. Naturally, the antidote is made from a nut that only grows in a couple of remote places, so our heroes need to traipse around groves of nut trees (where more shootouts ensue) before engaging in last-minute heroics as the confront Polk and Jin.

The plot is full of holes. The dialog is wooden. Characterization is an afterthought. But there’s plenty of action and some of it is exciting. Fans of action novels could do worse. Fans of good books could do better.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Vault by Boyd Morrison

Published by Touchstone on July 5, 2011

Like James Bond movies, some thrillers ask the reader to accept the unbelievable for the sake of enjoying a fun story. The reader's willingness to suspend disbelief is a function of the payoff -- that is, the more farfetched the plot, the more enjoyable it must be if the author doesn't want to lose the reader entirely. Boyd Morrison stretches the limits of plausibility nearly to their breaking point in The Vault, but the result is just as entertaining as the early Bond movies. A part of the novel, in fact, is almost a homage to Goldfinger.

Jordan Orr steals an ancient manuscript from a vault. Eighteen months later, Carol Benedict and recently retired General Sherman Locke are abducted, while Carol's sister Stacy and Sherman's son Tyler are on a ferry with a bomb that's twenty minutes away from exploding. All of this is orchestrated by Orr, who needs Stacy's expertise in ancient Greece and Tyler's engineering skill to help him solve the puzzle of the Archimedes codex and find the Midas Touch -- that is, the power to transmute objects into gold. To further complicate the plot (or maybe just to add a need for speed), Orr is in a race with a beautiful and deadly woman named Gia (a/k/a "The Fox") to recover the Midas Touch from its hiding place in Naples, and thus gives Stacy and Tyler only four days to do the job. Throw in an Italian crime family and a weapon of mass destruction and you've got yourself a thriller.

If you think all of this adds up to a wildly improbable premise, I agree with you. If you can overcome your skepticism, however, The Vault tells a surprisingly entertaining story. With the help of Tyler's co-worker and war buddy Grant, Tyler and Stacy begin a quest that takes them to the Fox's London lair, to a car chase on Germany's autobahn, to a museum heist and a shootout at the Parthenon in Athens, and to a series of violent confrontations in Naples. I was worried that the novel was heading toward a predictable finish, but there's nothing predictable about this story. A little silly, maybe, but I give Morrison credit for putting together a fun, exciting tale.

The Vault moves like the Ferrari that Tyler races on the autobahn. Morrison provides a wealth of interesting information about Archimedes without slowing the plot. He clearly did his research, not only into ancient history but into architecture, steganography, engineering, explosives, extremeophiles, and how to steal strontium-90. He even came up with an explanation for the Midas Touch. I'm no scientist and therefore can't evaluate the explanation but I'm nonetheless -- shall we say -- dubious. Still, the story works so well as an action-thriller that I was willing to set aside my doubts. More troubling is a complicated bit of subterfuge in which Tyler engages toward the novel's end, supposedly without being seen by the adversaries who were guarding him. That the adversaries would be so remarkably unobservant was inconsistent with their behavior until that point and just a little too convenient for our intrepid hero.

Morrison's writing style is unburdened by clichés. His characters aren't deep -- the male characters are standard ex-military Ranger types who are adept at flying planes, racing cars, and defusing bombs, while the lead female is plucky and smart -- but this book is all about plot; the characters exist only to move the story along. This isn't the kind of writing that wins literary awards (just as James Bond movies don't win Oscars), but it is the kind of high energy writing that entertains thriller fans. It worked for me.

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