Yeah, but his dialogue lands like a lead balloon lately. I don’t know if I’m just more aware of it, or if it has changed since the earlier books.
H.
someone gave me some book by him about fighting mutant fish or something and it was the worst book i’d ever read. i didn’t even finish the 5th chapter.
Yeah, those are the newer ones, many of which are co-authored and seem to lack the effort of his earier “Dirk Pitt” stuff. I think Houngan is right, the quality of both the dialog and the plot dropped off somewhere near the end of the original Dirk Pitt series and has been much poorer in the newer series. Look for an earlier book like Night Probe, Sahara or Inca Gold to get the real Clive Cussler experience.
The good ones are usually 1/3 shit getting messed up, 1/3 Dirk traveling, sciencing, screwing, and having a car chase, then the last 1/3 is him saying “fuck it” and bringing out the Thompson to take care of business.
H.
So, if I enjoy the hard-boiled prose of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, as well as thrilling adventure films like “King Solomon’s Mines” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” I just may find something to love about the aforementioned books?
It’s not hard boiled, it’s more swashbuckling with a bit of history/science thrown in. Mines and Raiders, certainly, but Cussler’s prose is . . . jaunty if anything.
H.
I think Chandler and Hammett are not really hard-boiled. Hard-boiled characters get into more fights and are not sensitive enough to worry about other people’s motivations.
Maybe Sax Rhomer’s Fu Manchu novels. You would have the crazed cultists and temples as well as some well written, if older, plot/storyline.
I actually jumped into the forum because I’ve been trying to find books by an author I read as a kid around 1967-1970, I can’t quite remember the name but I want to say Whitlock or Wheelock and his genre was mostly Westerns but I remember one book about a guy who was a coward who went to South America to work on an oil platform or such and was taken by bandits. He is brutalized but finds his courage when he hits his bottom and actually becomes a guerrilla leader and returns home a changed man. I’ve tried every search possible and no luck. So I’m throwing it out there.
As to the original question, I agree with the submission that says Robert E Howard rules the roost in this genre. Amazing work for one who died so young. Thanks!
Stumbled across this surprisingly fun tomb raider style mystery:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JD121IG
Found it via @Clay’s post in the Assassin’s Creed thread. It’s actually the second in a series and follows the book Clay was recommending, but can totally be read out of order. Book #1 is also absolutely worth reading, but for different reasons; less tomb raiding and more tomb building with a bit of Bernard Cornwell style world/character building.
Yeah, that’s a fun book! Lots of Wilbur Smith’s books are fun romps through historic Africa. The Seventh Scroll is spoilery for River God, but totally readable out of order, as you said. Warlock and the other River God sequels are pretty good, too (according to my mother, who read them).