Vixen 03 (Dirk Pitt Adventure, #4) (Dirk Pitt) (Windsor Selection S.)

by Clive Cussler

Vixen 03 is down. The plane, bound for the Pacific carrying thirty-six Doomsday bombs—canisters armed with quick-death germs of unbelievable potency—vanishes. Vixen has in fact crashed into an ice-covered lake in Colorado. 1988. Dirk Pitt, who heroically raised the Titanic, discovers the wreckage of Vixen 03. But two deadly canisters are missing. They're in the hands of a terrorist group. Their lethal mission: to sail a battleship seventy-five miles up the Potomac and blast Washington, D.C., to kingdom come. Only Dirk can stop them.

• ISBN10: 055358944X
• ISBN13: 9780553589443
• Publish Date: 25 July 2006 (first published 1 September 1978)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Bantam Books
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 362
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

I think this is the point where Cussler starts to hit his prime with the Dirk Pitt series. Dirk has grown out of most of his early ultra-misogynistic tendencies, and is even showing some serious feelings for Congresswoman Loren Smith. In fact, he is spending some "alone time" with her at her father’s cabin in Colorado when he makes a series of discoveries that lead him to the wreck of Vixen 03, an Air Force plane that had been presumed lost in the Pacific over 30 years previously. What you really don’t expect is for this aircraft to eventually tie in to the fight against Apartheid in South Africa and an aggrieved retired Royal Navy captain. There’s not a lot of NUMA in this, though there are a couple of appearances by Al Giordino and Admiral Sandecker. You do get one of Cussler’s usual big finishes, complete with all of the unbelievability and close calls that make this series so much fun to read.

[empressbrooke]

Vixen 03 flips back and forth between Dirk Pitt's discovery of a plane wreck in a Colorado lake and a civil war brewing in South Africa. The connection between the two is pretty clever, but unfortunately, the portions of the book that focus on the South African plot just drag. For a while, I forgot I was even reading a Dirk Pitt novel. Dirk's sections flew by in excitement, but the rest just did not mesh. After enjoying [b: Raise the Titanic|41706|Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt, #4)|Clive Cussler|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439783780s/41706.jpg|81973] so much, I was surprised by how much of a step backwards this book took. Glancing over some reviews online, there seems to be a consensus that this is Cussler's weakest novel, so I'm expecting to be back on track with his next book in the series.

As a side note, there is stuff in here that seems racist, but I had a hard time deciding if I should be offended. Unlike some books, it was hard to tell if the comments were the author's voice or not. And, more to the point, since this was written in the '70s before I was born, and before the current PC era, I'm unsure that I should apply my 2008 views to it. At this point I figure that it's a product of an era that I never experienced.