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
Finally, after eighteen other ratings this year, I am giving a novel a four-star rating! East of Desolation by Jack Higgins aka Henry Patterson (1929 – 2022) is my first four-star novel of the year. East of Desolation was first published in 1968 and I think is one of the author’s first novels – if not the first – to be released under his pen name “Jack Higgins.” Incidentally, after reading this novel, I have read a novel with this year with the words 
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.
New York Dead by Stuart Woods (b. 1938) was first published in 1991. This is the first in the Stone Barrington series. There is really not much I can say about this one that is positive. Shockingly, there are over sixty in the series. One of the reasons I read it is because I am trying to get through a very large stack of – truly – pulp fiction. The stack has a lot of real junk fiction on it – schlock and pulp at its finest worst. Part of me is utterly amused by how horrible most of these books are. I do mean in that paradoxical sense of “so bad, its good.” Not all of them meet that level, though. Most are “so bad, just so bad.”
Gumshoe Blues by Paul D. Brazill is a short story/short collection of really fast-paced snapshots of a self-described private investigator named Peter Ord. For the readers who are very fastidious about their categorizations, this would be considered modern noir – “Brit Grit.” Under one hundred pages, this little copy is via Close to the Bone Publishing, which is U.K. publishing house specializing in crime fiction and modern noir. Their edition of Gumshoe Blues is from 2019. I think Brazill had published some amount of this work in some other manner at some point previously, but I am not a biblio-historian.
I finished The Room of White Fire by T. Jefferson Parker (2017). I have not read anything by this author. I expected a private investigator kind of novel, but got something closer in type to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher stuff.
The Gray Man by Mark Greaney is the ninth novel that I have read that was originally published in 2009. Its not purposeful. It is, however, the first in the Gray Man series of novels and the first I have read by Mark Greaney. Greaney has been the collaborator/writer for the Tom Clancy (1947 – 2013) franchise of novels. I have read none of those.
I finished another novel today. I read Subterranean by James Rollins. Hopefully, someday, somehow, the computer (aka: hate machine) will magically be fixed. Otherwise, I will soon run out of books to read. Seriously. And I have a lot of books.
The other book I read before the resurrection of the computer was Contest by Matthew Reilly. The back reads:
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