Crescent Dawn by Clive CusslerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Records recovered from the ancient port of Caesarea, Roman artifacts aboard a sunken Ottoman gallery off Turkey, and two murderous siblings looking to resurrect the Ottoman Empire. Crescent Dawn is the twenty-first book of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series and fourth with his son Dirk, finds the Pitt family in the eastern Mediterranean and Britain unknowing find evidence to an ancient mystery while coming across political terrorists and rogue archaeologists.
The plot begins first in 327 AD a Roman galley carrying cargo so important that a contingent of the Emperor Constantine’s own guard is aboard when it is attacked by pirates off Crete before jumping 1916 in which a British warship mysteriously explodes and sinks in the North Sea. In the present, important mosques in Egypt and Turkey are damaged by planted explosives that raise tensions amongst Muslims across the Middle East, but especially in secular Turkey where a popular fundamentalist Istanbul imam is convinced to jump into the upcoming Presidential election by Ozden Celik. Celik and his sister Maria are behind the mosque bombings are the heirs to the last Ottoman sultan and are attempting to resurrect their family’s place in the country while also grabbing up anything connected to the Ottoman family. While doing underwater explorations off Turkey and on the Israeli coasts respectfully, Dirk Pitt and Dirk Pitt, Jr., find historic discoveries but the elder Pitt’s gets him in the sights of the Celik’s due to its connection to Sulieman the Magnificent. Pitt and NUMA are instrumental in help prevent a massive terror attack in Istanbul by the Celik’s just days before the election and prevent the fundamentalist candidate from winning. Summer Pitt stumbles upon a manifest in England that dates to the time of Constantine and sheds new light on early Christianity through relics found by his mother Helena but finds herself followed and foiled by a rogue British archaeologist. It turns out all three Pitts have found things connected to the 4th century Roman gallery that is found in a cavern in Crete with numerous holy relics connected with Christ and the disciples.
This book continued the fantastic run of narratives since Dirk Cussler joined his father in writing the series, however this is the first that had some annoying plot holes. The biggest and most important for the narrative plot is how getting a fundamentalist Islamic candidate win the Presidential election of the secular republic of Turkey would lead to the Celiks once again coming to power, without really touching on this the Celiks are just psychopathic terrorist siblings of which Maria is the better character of the two. The secondary antagonist, Bannister Ridley, was a cleaver annoying—in a good way—character that added spice to the book. The Pitts being split up into individual stories before coming together at the end was smart decision because it allowed Dirk Jr. and Summer to grow as characters even though Pitt and Al Giordino continued to be the A-subplot.
Crescent Dawn continues the strong narrative installments since Dirk Cussler has joined his father in writing though a significant plot hole marred it slightly. Regardless of the usual clichés of the series, Clive Cussler’s signature franchise is going through its best stretch of books.
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