Mirage (The Oregon Files)

Clive Cussler is the author of dozens of New York Times bestsellers, most recently The Striker and Zero Hour. He lives in Arizona.

Jack Du Brul is the author of the Philip Mercer series, and the coauthor with Cussler of six Oregon Files novels. He lives in Vermont.

The latest Oregon Files adventure opens with Juan Cabrillo breaking into a Russian supermax prison to free a friend, the man who had helped outfit Cabrillo’s ship, the Oregon, with its high-tech hardware. Shot during the escape, the man soon dies but not before uttering his cryptic last words, about an “eerie boat,” the Aral Sea, and a name: Tesla. Cabrillo soon—one might say almost too slickly soon—finds the boat, a pleasure craft built in Pennsylvania for George Westinghouse, who had been a big booster of inventor Nikola Tesla’s alternating current (AC) electrical system in the late nineteenth century. That pleasure boat vanished at sea in 1902. But what did a mysterious blue cloud have to do with the disappearance, and how did the boat turn up in the Aral Sea, 10,000 miles from where it vanished? And what does any of this have to do with a modern-day superweapon that could change the face of the world forever? The Oregon Files stories don’t represent Cussler’s finest work, but fans can depend on them to deliver action and adventure, if not full-bodied characters. --David Pitt