When details of war stories metamorphose into tall tales

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getart...b20050116a2.htm

High-tech Jules Verne
Much like the works by "techno-thriller" author Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler's adventures purvey good-old America-centric heroics. Featuring underwater denizen Dirk Pitt and his comrades in arms, they combine well-researched nautical history with the latest scientific developments. Now age 74, Cussler appears to be grooming his son Dirk to inherit the family business, so to speak.

This time trouble arrives in the form of Dae Jong Kang, wealthy head of a South Korean business conglomerate who happens to be a fanatical North Korean mole. Using murder, bribery and other forms of coercion, Kang is bent on wooing South Korean politicians to vote to end the U.S. military presence, with the goal of Korean reunification on the North's terms.

In the meantime, Kang's minions are searching for two sunken Japanese World War II submarines that carried a deadly wartime payload: bomblets containing a freeze-dried smallpox virus (code-named "Makaze" or "Black Wind") developed by biological warfare researchers in the notorious Unit 731.

In a sleight of hand to keep the Americans off balance, the villains assume the guise of Japanese Red Army radicals. So, while Americans are screaming and hollering at the Japanese (after all, who can tell the difference between these sinister Asiatics?), Kang's minions confiscate the virus from a Yank recovery ship and pay rogue scientists to transform it into an even deadlier bioweapon for use on Californians.

Pitt joins forces with a tough-as-nails daughter in this cliffhanger. While tales about business tycoons who use their wealth to start wars have never come across as very convincing, you can't read a Cussler novel without getting a snorkelful of authentic nautical history, plus the latest high-tech breakthroughs in oceanographic exploration. It's all great fun.