A Stupendously Badass Character Named Dirk Pitt

I’ve been a HUGE fan of Clive Cussler novels since I first laid eyes on a paperback copy of Vixen 03 in a drugstore book rack, way back in the late 1970s.  The green-shaded cover illustration sported the ghostly form of a Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter lying broken on the bottom of the sea, a column of air bubbles still rising from the crashed aircraft’s fuselage.  I snatched the book out of the rack, flipped it over, and read the teaser text on the back jacket.

An Air Force transport plane with a lethal Top Secret cargo vanishes without a trace.  A retired battleship pressed back into service for a final mission that could bring the United States to its knees.  Politics…  Intrigue…  Adventure…  My kind of stuff?  Oh yeah.  Oh hell yeah…

When the clerk rang up the sale, I wouldn’t even let him put my book in a bag.  I forked over my cash and stuck the sales receipt between the pages as a makeshift bookmark.  I walked out of that drugstore with the treasured paperback tucked neatly under my arm, secure in the knowledge that I had found something special.

I was not disappointed.  The writing had my pulse pounding from the very first paragraph.  The plot completely blew me away.  I literally stayed up all night to read it.  By the time I reluctantly turned the last page at about four in the morning, I knew I would be a Cussler fan for the rest of my life.  Who needed James Bond or Luke Skywalker?  I had discovered a stupendously badass character named Dirk Pitt.

When I found out that there were three more Dirk Pitt novels in print, I nearly had a seizure.  This was in the dark days before the internet, and the words Amazon-dot-com had yet to be spoken on planet Earth.  I spent endless weeks stalking the shelves of used book stores until I finally located copies of The Mediterranean Caper, Iceberg, and Raise the Titanic.

I blew through all three of my new treasures in a matter of days, and then began my long wait.  I knew that Mr. Cussler was out there somewhere, pecking away at the keys of his typewriter and turning out more pages of adrenaline-fueled reading fun.  If I watched long enough, sooner or later, another Pitt adventure was bound to surface.

And so it did…  In another year or two, Night Probe came along.  And then Deep Six, and Cyclops.  The stories kept getting better, and old Dirk just kept right on saving the world from the kinds of villains that Bond only dreamed of.

The years turned into decades, and the Dirk Pitt stories continued to appear at fairly regular intervals.  Treasure.  Dragon.  Sahara.  Inca Gold.

I loved them all, but I was especially fond of Arctic Drift.  It hit the shelves in 2008, the year that one of my own novels won the Clive Cussler Grandmaster Award.  Clive himself presented me with the award check.  His son and coauthor, Dirk (the namesake of my very favorite badass) handed me the trophy.

That was the absolute highpoint of my life as a Cussler fanatic.  I had met the authors of my favorite books.  Shaken their hands.  Received their generous accolades, and the kind words of advice that they offered to me as a fellow author.  I had reached the zenith.  There was nowhere else to go.  Nowhere higher to climb.

Or so I thought…

Then, a year or so ago, I received an early morning text message from retired Rear Admiral John Waickwicz.  He wanted to know if I’d read Poseidon’s Arrow, the latest Dirk Pitt Novel.  It was a Sunday, and I was having one of my rare sleep-in mornings.  Rubbing my eyes until they were clear enough to make out the screen of my phone, I replied that I had not yet read Poseidon’s Arrow, but it was at the top of my to-be-read stack.

The admiral’s reply was short, but emphatic.  “Read Chapter 26!”

I texted back two words.  “Will do.”

I fired up my Kindle (no pun intended), settled into a comfy position on my couch, and started to read.  I was tempted to skip ahead to Chapter 26, to find out what the admiral was excited about.  But that’s just not the proper way to read a Dirk Pitt story.  You have to savor it.  No…  Actually, you have to devour it.  But you don’t jump ahead to the good parts, because they’re ALL good parts.

So I started at the beginning, flipping electronic pages as fast as my sleep-addled brain could gobble up the words.  It took no time at all for the story to suck me in.  Dirk was in rare form once again—jousting with bad guys, flirting with disaster, and taking in the world through those depthless green eyes that make certain women a bit weak in the knees.

I was so wrapped up in the action and intrigue that I completely forgot about the admiral’s text message.  I didn’t need a reason to read this book.  This was Dirk fucking Pitt!  Reason enough.

Then I came to Chapter 26, and my eyes nearly bugged out of my head.  Allow me to quote from the opening paragraph…

“The Gulfstream’s wheels touched down with a thump, jarring Ann awake.  The excitement of the past few days had finally caught up with her, and she had slept since the plane left the ground in Idaho.  She yawned and glanced across the aisle at Pitt, who sat engrossed reading a Jeff Edwards novel.”

WHAT?  What was that?

Had my brain processed the words correctly?  Dirk Pitt was engrossed in reading a Jeff Edwards novel?  The stupendous badass of stupendous badasses was reading a Jeff Edwards novel?

I read the paragraph again.  The words were still there, shining from the screen of my Kindle Fire like flaming beacons of badassery.

I’ve have a while now to get over the shock, but the joy and amazement have never faded.  Dirk Pitt reads my books.  How cool is that?