I would like to tell you about a book called Fire Ice by Clive Cussler. Fire Ice is from the National Underwater and Marine Agency (N.U.M.A.) series or files, as Mr. Cussler likes to call them. Hero of the series is the courageous adventurer Kurt Austin. He heads the N.U.M.A. Special Assignments team. Kurt may look like an ordinary oceanographer but he capable of really walloping the power- hungry maniacs he meets on a regular basis.  Kurt’s sidekick is Jose (Joe) Zavala, a cool Mexican- American with quite an attitude. Joe loves making dry, humorless comments everywhere, even when he and Austin are in near death situations.

My favorite part of the book was when Austin and Joe were climbing up a ladder on a ship in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly Austin turns around and fires his revolver at Joe, but the bullet doesn’t hit him. Instead, it hits a Russian Cossack warrior who was holding a saber, ready to kill Joe. Austin lowered the gun and said to a perplexed Zavala “ That Cossack was about to cut you down to size.” I found this remark hilarious and I couldn’t stop laughing for two minutes afterwards.

A note about the author, Clive Cussler. Clive Cussler began writing in 1965 when his wife took a job working nights for the local police department where they lived in California. After making dinner for the kids and putting them to bed he had no one to talk to and nothing to do so he decided to start writing. His most famous creation is marine engineer, government agent and adventurer, Dirk Pitt. Dirk Cussler, Clive Cussler’s son, is the namesake for Dirk Pitt. He has assisted his father with writing the latest novels in the immensely popular Dirk Pitt series. Cussler's novels are examples of techno-thrillers where Cussler uses fantastic spectacles and far-fetched plots – like the plots of James Bond or Indiana Jones movies. As a real-life underwater explorer, Cussler has discovered more than sixty shipwreck sites and has written non-fiction books about his findings, which I might start reading next. He is also the founder of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), a non-profit organization with the same name as the fictional government agency that employs Dirk Pitt. Dirk Cussler also plays an integral part in NUMA  - he is the President and his father is the Chairman, which I thought was pretty cool.

Important finds by Cussler's N.U.M.A. include the Carpathia, the ship famed for being the first to come to the aid of the Titanic survivors; the Mary Celeste, the famed ghost ship that was found abandoned with cargo intact, and the Manassas, the first ironclad of the civil war.

I discovered from Clive Cussler’s website that he is a Fellow of both the Explorers Club of New York and the Royal Geographic Society in London. He has also been honored with the Lowell Thomas Award for outstanding underwater exploration. Cussler's books are published in more than 40 languages in more than 100 countries with a readership of more than 125 million avid fans and I am one of the most avid ones!