The Wrecker, Clive Cussler and Jack DuBrul

The Wrecker, the late Clive Cussler's opening tale of adventure featuring early 20th-century detective Isaac Bell, has the distinction of being the last book that Cussler wrote without a co-author. Justin Scott took that role with the second book of the series and held it until 2019's The Titanic Secret, when Jack DuBrul returned to the Cussler bullpen and took over the Isaac Bell duties. DuBrul had previously worked with Cussler on "The Oregon Files" series.

By being set nearly a century earlier than his other books, the Bell series often proved to be more interesting than some of the other Cussler books, which sometimes took on a cookie-cutter quality and rehashed older bits and concepts. Scott mostly kept that interest, although he managed to lay some duds before the audience as well. DuBrul's first outing brought some of his own style to Bell and his cast of characters, as well as including a neat tie-in to Cussler's own Raise the Titanic! in his mainstay Dirk Pitt series. The Saboteurs is another strong entry and sets a high bar for the other co-authors to reach as they may continue their respective series following Cussler's death in February 2020.

Bell's Van Dorn Agency sends him to meet with a United States Senator, and almost immediately after they sit down together assassins target the official. Bell manages to save his life and eliminate the attackers, but the mystery of who sent them remains. A potential tie to terrorists trying to thwart the largely finished Panama Canal crops up and Bell takes himself to the Canal Zone to learn more. Learning more, of course, will put him squarely in the sights of the shadowy forces apparently trying to stop or at least slow down the Canal's completion. Usually able to draw on substantial Van Dorn resources, Bell is mostly alone in the Zone and nearby Panama itself and realizes he doesn't really know who he can trust.

DuBrul's authorial voice has usually tended towards the he-man butt-kicker style but without the excesses that can make the genre a self-parody. His own heroes frequently had to think their way through problems -- which matches well with the detective dimension of Bell's character. All of the answers seem to be right in front of him, but they lack coherence and DuBrul does a good job of showing how this aspect of the matter more than any other frustrates Bell in his efforts.

The early 20th-century setting puts different borders around his story than he may have been used to, but that also seems to challenge him to work harder to tighten and properly match the narrative to its world. And he can still put out a chase scene like few others -- DuBrul's Philip Mercer character once had a car chase through a gigantic automobile carrier ship as it traversed the Panama Canal, and Bell has a similarly taut race after a saboteur, through the excavations and unfinished pipelines of that same Canal as it's being built.

A later-narrative angle with Bell's wife Marion feels a little too contrived and winds up not really carrying the weight it should -- some more cooking might have made it a better fit and moved this Isaac Bell adventure across the line into five-star territory. As it stands, though, it's the best of the Bell series and a reason to cross one's reading fingers that DuBrul continues to follow along with the Van Dorn Agency's top operative.