Clive Cussler - Iceberg

After reading The Storm, I really wanted to give another Clive Cussler book a go. Iceberg takes us all the way back to 1976 in terms of publication and based on my experiences with more recent novels the 1970s seemed to be a much richer and exciting time for books.

Iceberg sees us following the trail of enigmatic airman, Dirk Pitt as he goes investigating a strange iceberg with a ship lodged in it. It transpires that the ship in the iceberg is just the start of a conspiracy which threatens to have him killed at every turn. Despite this, he continues his investigations against the wishes of his superiors and nearly gets killed a lot more. It’s fun romp from start to finish as well as being a page turner which I found difficult to put down.

My favourite part of reading this was being able to look back in time at what used to be acceptable language. There is one point in the story where Dirk pretends to be gay in order to throw off the main antagonist. While being ridiculously funny, this part is also very un-PC in that Dirk is referenced as a faggot on more than one occasion. If you try to put that in speech and narrative in this day and age, you’ll be screamed at by everyone.

Also, there appears to be some borderline misogynistic points towards some of the women but there is also a balance between this and the woman in question being strong and able to handle themselves. It’s weirdly ahead of its time in that regard.

It terms of writing errors, they are hard to spot when the writing is enjoyable, but one did stand out quite clearly. On page 308 a character is talking but the narrative says it’s a different character. Once again, I had to read the paragraph several times to work out what was going on which broke flow somewhat.

Dirk as a character is almost overpowered in terms of his abilities. He basically has the conditioning of a rhino and no amount of savage beatings can stop him climbing sheer cliffs and running for miles. Another thing that Dirk Pitt has is a superhuman ability to work stuff out. He’s no Jack Reacher by any means but he still manages to reach correct, and bizarre, conclusions with seemingly very little information. I suppose it’s all part of the allure of America’s answer to James Bond.

Another thing worth pointing out is that Cussler really knows his stuff. He has a clearly advanced knowledge of aircraft, how they work and the art of the possible and has a skill of explaining this to a dumbass like me in a way that makes the writing accessible rather than overloading it with jargon. He also has a knack of not taking shortcuts with his characters in this regard. If a character is very knowledgeable about a subject, there will be a character on hand who isn’t, who then says something like, ‘can you say that again in English please?’ It’s a device that works well throughout the book.

Iceberg is a really enjoyable 394 page read that I managed to smash through in just a couple of hours. I would recommend it to any fans of the action adventure genre.

Iceberg by Clive Cussler was published by Sphere Books in 1976. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)