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Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Putnam Adult
Manufacturer: Putnam Adult
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 419
Printing Date: June 01, 2003
Publishing house: Putnam Adult
Release Date: June 20, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 399209
Studio: Putnam Adult
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Critics and fans everywhere have welcomed the enormously entertaining new series from Clive Cussler: the adventures of Kurt Austin, taken from the NUMA(r) Files.
Hailed as a hero for the new millennium, Austin is the leader of NUMA(r)'s Special Assignments Team-and the threat before him now is definitely special. A confrontation between a radical environmentalist group and a Danish cruiser has forced Austin and colleague Joe Zavala to come to the rescue of a shipful of trapped men; but when the two of them investigate further, they discover that something far more sinister is at work. A shadowy multinational corporation is attempting to wrest control of the very seas themselves-no matter what havoc results-and is killing anyone who attempts to stop them. When Austin's boat blows up and he just barely survives, it seems certain he is the subsequent in line to die-but he cannot stop now. For the environmental disaster has already begun, and only he and NUMA(r) stand in the way. . . .
Rich with all the hair-raising adventure and endless imagination unique to Cussler, White Death is an exceptional thriller from the grand master of adventure fiction.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Like most of Cussler's work, this is a great read, and even better listen. I've been known to sit in my car after traveling, just to hear the last of a chapter. This was one of those.
My only gripe was the format of the C D, it only has one trak per disc. If you don't have a fast forward feature on your player, you have to listen over again to get to where you stopped. I've never run into this before.
Rated by buyers 
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Rarely have I read a novel with such abundant use of the word `swarthy'. This is the type of novel that should be so bad it's funny, but it isn't. It's just silly. An albino genius madman is intent on destroying the world's fish stocks by releasing killer mutant salmon into the wild, and it's up to our philosophy-reading, antique pistol-collecting, ever charming, always handsome hero Kurt Austin and his NUMA team to save the day. The story is just goofy. The dialogue is chock full of snappy one liners that are staples in action films: When someone is eaten by a mutant fish, one of the characters quips that `he has gone to pieces'.
The very first Cussler novel I read was the recently released `The Chase'. I thought The Chase was pretty good - not great - but pretty good. Then I read Polar Shift, which was pretty silly, but not terrible. But White Death is awful. I think a novel like this would work better if it made fun of itself a little more. But it doesn't. It's too preposterous to be a good thriller, and takes itself too seriously to allow the reader to enjoy it as `over-the-top' campy fun.
White Death is not as bad as Patterson's `London Bridges' (arguably the worst novel ever published), but not by much.
Rated by buyers 
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and I like the Hardy Boys. This book is very light and easy to read. Frank and Joe Hardy had their cast of ever-loyal supporting characters, and so do Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala. Even the descriptions and development of the characters have a "Hardy Boys" feel.
"White Death" is a great book to read if you need to get out of the real world for moment and just enjoy some adventurous fiction.
Rated by buyers -
Clive Cussler was born in 1931 and grew up in Alhambra, California. He attended Pasadena City College before joining the Air Force. He went on to a successful advertising career, winning many national honours for his copywriting. He has also explored the deserts of the American Southwest in search of lost gold mines, dived in isolated lakes in the Rocky Mountains looking for lost aircraft and hunted under the sea for shipwrecks of historic significance, discovering and identifying more than sixty. He is married with three children, and divides his time between Colorado and Arizona. His credentials as a best selling author cannot be doubted and he has a large `stable' of best selling adventure novels.
Yes some of Clive Cussler's books are a little far fetched, to say the least, but surely that is not a negaative thing. Most people read to get away from their everyday life and yes, sometimes to go into a little world of their own. If an adventure story is a little far fetched, so what, it is all part of the enjoyment, after all the books are novels and not meant to be taken to seriously.
White Death is another adventure novel featuring Kurt Austin, leader of the NUMA Special Assignments Team and starts with a confrontation between an environmentalist group and a Danish cruiser, not an earth shattering confrontation in itself, but something that is going to escalate into something far more serious . . .
Rated by buyers -
This might have been better presented as a comic book; the characters are all cartoon like. I found myself rooting for the villain and vaguely hoping that the protagonists would expire in the horrible manner they were supposed to. Did Cussler really expect the reader to believe the premise of any aspect of this story? A few times I actually dropped the book out of my hands in disbelief.
- On a few minutes notice a rescue submarine is lifted by helicopter to an airport where both are loaded into a plane and flown to a new location where Danish sailors are rescued only a few hours after sinking. The main character, Austin, cuts through the hull and says "Anyone call for a taxi?".
- Austin and one of the villains engage in a shootout in Washington D.C. while driving dogsleds in the summer and failing to attract any police attention whatsoever.
- A marine biologist and her husband, both working as government bureaucrats, have a Lear jet at their disposal, which they get to in a car that likely costs more than twice their salaries. They fly back and forth to Canada in it carrying loaded firearms.
- The villain, rather than use a car or plane, seems to prefer travelling around at night in a hydrogen filled Graf Zepellin that he found crashed in the arctic. Oh, the humanity!
Dialogue is completely pompous; everyone talks to each other in a very formal way, almost like they're in a Shakespeare play. The characters are all superlative in their abilities and have no flaws or idiosyncracies. This whole thing is just loaded with cliches and hackneyed descriptions.
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