A First and Final Bow

Interestingly, the last "Fargo Adventure" to come out with any real input from adventure-novel kingpin Clive Cussler turns out to be the origin story of the couple, collaborating with his co-author for the last several Fargo books, Robin Burcell. And you can make a good case that none of the other writers that Cussler, who passed away in February, worked with could have made this story work half so well as it did, since it involves the protagonists, Sam and Remi Fargo, meeting and falling in love while they (naturally) search for treasure and thwart a baddie.

Burcell has been the Cussler co-author most able to give his very much stock characters depth and dimension, and Wrath of Poseidon's central adventure will require every bit of her ability in that area to work. It also requires her much-better-than-any-other-co-author hand at writing female characters to make Remi Longstreet's pathway to Remi Fargo believable.

The Fargos learn an old enemy is out of jail, reminding them of their meeting and first escapade together -- one of the few where they didn't manage to track down the ancient treasure they sought. They consult St. Julien Perlmutter, maritime historian par excellence and familiar figure to Cussler's Dirk Pitt novel readers. He helps them uncover new clues to a great wealth of Persian treasure lost forever in 546 BC, but before he will share them he wants to know how they came to hunt this particular legend. They tell him, including the details of their first meetings and how their by-now solid partnership began -- as well as how it almost didn't.

As mentioned above, it's doubtful any of Cussler's other co-authors -- and certainly none of his previous Fargo co-authors -- could have managed to make the human and relational elements of this origin story work. Burcell does, whether because as a woman she writes Remi far more convincingly and without that part of the story the whole thing falls apart or because she's a better writer, or both. The actual hunt for the treasure and clash with the spoiled rich-boy criminal Adrian Kyril meanders more than is good for it and sometimes gets almost too fuzzy to follow; it could have used about 20 percent less twist and a dash less turn. The set pieces are fun, though, as both Sam and Remi learn about each other's strengths in a crisis and develop the sang-froid that's their trademark. It's hard to imagine any modern publisher willing to turn off a cash spigot like Cussler's varied series of novels, so perhaps the Fargo stories will continue. As long as Burcell is at the helm, that's not a bad deal for readers at all.