Clive Cussler: Ghost Soldier

Juan Cabrillo and his crew aboard the warship Oregon face off against a brilliant and evil arms dealer in the entertaining latest Oregon Files adventure (after Golden Buddha). The action opens during WWII, when an American airman is captured and imprisoned in a Japanese research center for chemical and biological weapons. In the present, a sadistic gunrunner known only as “the Vendor” has been selling $80 billion in weaponry abandoned after America withdrew from Afghanistan. The U.S. government taps Cabrillo to figure out who’s behind the transactions. Eventually, he leads his team—with the addition of beautiful and brainy engineer Callie Cosima, who designs state-of-the-art submersibles—to the Vendor’s remote, booby-trapped island in the Bismarck Sea, where they fight flame-breathing robots and other obstacles. Maden effortlessly weaves subplots about the American POW and the Vendor’s scheme to unleash biotoxins into the main action, which is vivid, bloody, and occasionally jaw-dropping. This fires on all cylinders. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency. (Sept.)