I finished The Mediterranean Caper by Clive Cussler (1931 – 2020), which was first published in 1973. I think it is the first in the Dirk Pitt (the main character) series, even though most lists have Pacific Vortex! listed first. I have also read that one, but it was published in 1983, but allegedly written first. It absolutely does not matter to the reader, though, so do not get caught up in the chronology.
I decided (in a whimsical and irrelevant way) that I would read a bunch of pulpy action-adventure things. I have been enjoying the adventure stuff more than anything else lately. One cannot, I think, always be in the mood to read this sort of shlocky pulp. However, right now for me, it is a total escape and ease. Reading novels should be fun and while I can appreciate the heavy duty literature, I am content to be reading this rubbish.
The Mediterranean Caper is just one half-step away from the “men’s adventure novels” of the 50s and 60s. So, if the reader is not aware of that, they may have different expectations of this novel. Unfortunately, because this novel hovers too closely toward the stylings of those men’s adventure writings, it has not aged well at all. Honestly, I have read some of the usual crusty men’s adventure pulps – and The Mediterranean Caper does not quite measure up to their standards (whatever that may mean) either. Well, the so-called toxic masculinity, alpha male themes of the pulps usually gets combined with a splash of patriotism, lurid scenes with farcical women, stereotyped villains, all placed over a steady beat of gunfire. In The Mediterranean Caper we get a thoroughly dislikeable main character, plot holes, stereotyped villains, and a level of ridiculous that ruins all of the shlock-genre’s standards.
This novel is completely “over-the-top.” Anything and everything that happens is over-the-top. Imagine any scene or character in an action novel and then turn up the volume on every aspect. For example, a character who might be considered cocky is now nearly sociopathic. A scene that has some physical confrontation turns into a superhero battle but as if enacted by elementary school children.
The writing at some points is so ridiculously bad that its laughable – literally, like, one needs to laugh at the author level. The whole thing, frankly, is ridiculous. To his credit, Cussler (and his co-authors) did eventually modernize and swing their future novels from the shlock of the men’s adventure pulps toward a more mainstream, but still lightweight, airport novel. However, reading this earliest is going to be tough reading for most people in the 2020s.
I think readers will criticize the book because of its “pulpy” themes. For example, the misogynistic stuff is everywhere here and rightly to be complained about. The endless smoking also grates on the reader’s nerves, especially since even the characters refer to the cigarettes as “cancer sticks.” The harsh and cruel judgment of anyone who is not the main character or his best friend is really awful, as well. (e.g. the ship’s boy who gets growled at by Pitt)
However, I think it is also necessary to criticize the fact that the novel – even if it wants to emulate the most lewd, action-y novel of the 1950s – is utterly inconsistent. Every character seems like a Gemini. Every character seems to have two sides and the reader never knows which they are about to confront. I think even pulp readers would want a story with more consistency. The lack of consistency makes these characters, for example, shift from being utter jerks to being crazed lunatics.
Anyway, the ridiculous: Pitt spends several sections of the novel without any pants on. I feel like he’s nearly a nudist. The only time that is “excusable” is when he is laying down in his shower stall with his legs up on the shower walls. I mean, at least he’s showering, I guess? Its quite absurd, though, how often this guy’s pants are off – and I am not including his “romantic” scene.
But the best line in the book is when the Greek military special forces (again, this is not really clear, I thought of this like SWAT or something) guy actually says: “Great thunderbolts of Zeus, my inspector, what has happened?” – pg 134, chapter 12. I admit it, I lost it. I snorted and laughed. Utterly over-the-top ridiculous. It is literally the last line one would anticipate, but there it is! Stupidity! The moments of stupid/ridiculous are very frequent throughout the book. One that will stick in my memory for awhile is how Pitt hides a paring knife from the dinner table into his pocket and then later on cuts the mooring line on the boat he steals with it. Why? Because:
Too tired to rise, Pitt leaned over and cut the line with the faithful paring knife and kicked the gear level in reverse. – pg. 86, chapter 8
I kind of want to video real-life examples of this. I want people who are over-tired and injured to casually lean over the hull of bass boats or something and cut line with a kitchen paring knife. Ridiculous.
There is another scene that I want to mention because I do not think any of us will ever run into this scene otherwise. Pitt is making an escape in the wee hours and he steals a donkey to use as his getaway car. He climbs on the donkey but the thing will not walk. He decides this is because he is not using its name. So he starts calling it all kinds of male Greek god names. And then he checks the gender of the donkey and realizes its female – so when he uses the correct female Greek goddess name, the animal starts to haul his butt down the roadway. Ridiculous!
Anyway, lest I do not give credit where credit is due, I did like two features of the novel. The first is using a WWI plane to strafe the airbase and cause ruckus in the sea was a neat inclusion and a good idea. The second is using a submarine to maintain the smuggling operation is also interesting, though, I doubt that works in 2023. Still, I appreciated the uniqueness of this setup.
I cannot really recommend this to anyone – even those who can happily enjoy a 60s pulp novel. Literally, I see no reason to read this. It is over-the-top to an extreme level. The main character is hateable. The plot and characters are inconsistent. The ridiculousness is massive. In a very weak defense, the novel does not take itself seriously whatsoever.
2 stars
Its October so I have decided to read “horror” novels. Well, it is not as simple as that, but that is close enough. I do not read a lot of horror, so I halfway dedicated October to reading horror genre items – or things that are close-enough to horror, I suppose. It is, again, an effort to clear books from shelves and to make myself read things other than I normally read. I wanted to start off the month kind of “light” (i.e. no absolutely terrorizing horrific fiction) and so I pulled Damned by Chuck Palahniuk (b. 1962) off of the shelf. Damned was published in 2011 and is Palahniuk’s eleventh novel (I think, maybe twelfth). I think most people on the planet recognize him as the author of Fight Club (1996).
If you, as I did, decide to “pseudo-hurricane evac,” you cannot bring every book on your tbr-mountain. As distressing as this is, it is possible to just take one single book along with you. And mainly, this is for space constraints. To be honest, I did not evac for safety reasons, but for sanity reasons. So, I was not really worried about the destruction some locations had, but sitting around in power outages while 50-mph wind whips nature at you is not exactly relaxing. So, what book did I grab? Well, I grabbed Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Mainly because I figured it would last a day or two and I really had been meaning to knock it off of the tbr list for awhile.
Because at the end of the day, Crouch has his main character working on a problem – and it is not the problem of quantum physics or how to return to a specific universe. It is actually: what is happiness? how does one have a happy life? of what does a happy life consist – and how do our choices determine this?
Fated by Benedict Jacka is the first in the Alexander Verus series. It was released in 2012. The entire series is finished, now, and is twelve novels. I happen to think that the USA book cover editions are very colorful and well-designed. Someone in my household read a bunch of these and left them shelved. I have been meaning to read them in a very non-prioritized way for awhile. Since this is a shelf-clearing year (do not listen to my nonsense – I say this every year), I decided to grab the first novel and take it along to the mountains this week.
The Third Gate by Lincoln Child is the third book in his Jeremy Logan series. I have read the previous two novels. The Third Gate was published in 2012 and is the first in the series that has Logan on every page of the book, so to speak. In the previous novels, Logan was not a major character; here he takes control of the narrative.
The good thing: listen, I love setting and the setting of this novel is really good. I mean it. I was surprised to find such a strong, interesting, and intense setting in an adventure pulp. Child liberally utilizes the concept of the Sudd (Cp. The White Nile by Alan Moorehead – 1960) and expands and develops it as needed. Seriously, this stuff captured my imagination and I wanted to spend more time in this setting having it weigh on us, confuse us, frighten us. In other words, Child’s idea to use it is a great idea and he did a decent job. I just want him to have done an even better job. I did pull my old, crusty copy off of my bookshelves and think I will skim through it, just because I can.
I finished another book, but its another that I really did not like. In fact, I may actually dislike this one. I read Ruth Rendell’s From Doon With Death from 1964. I have heard that Baroness Rendell (1930 – 2015) is considered a strong mystery writer, so of course I started with the first of her famous Inspector Wexford novels. After having read this one, I have to say that I certainly hope that her other novels are big improvements. I think there are twenty-four novels in the Inspector Wexford series – and Rendell also wrote a bunch of other novels, besides.
Blazing through books these last two weeks, I finished another. It was on my to-be-read list because I had read the first, 
Once again enjoying some vintage science fiction, I finished up This Immortal by Roger Zelazny (1937 – 1995). It is the first Zelazny that I have read, I think (unless I’ve come upon some short fiction that I have forgotten about). This is such an odd novel I actually feel bad for anyone reading this review because I feel like my review will be scattered and swirly. Sorry about that in advance.
The Gunslinger by Stephen King was first published in 1982, but it was actually separate stories that were previously written that made this into a “fix-up” novel, as they are called. In 2003, King famously revised and updated the novel. I do not know if this is the second or third time reading this novel. Every time I read it, though, I feel more or less the same way about it – its really good in retrospect after having read the next two books or so in The Dark Tower series. Taken on its own, it is exceedingly weird and disjointed and awkward.
Among all the other books I am currently reading, I managed to read through this one. I was looking forward to this book because its a collaborative, small-press/self-published work that at 159 pages, I knew would be a easy reader. I have previously read an item by Armand Rosamilia, but I have not read any of the other authors. One of the things that I found appealing about the work was that it was just supposed to be a good fun read – these authors allegedly get together and drink beer and write out some horror stories and have fun with the genre. The book has a second volume, but I do not own that one. Beers and Fears: The Haunted Brewery was first released in 2019.
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