06 Dec 2010 01:43:15
Crescent Dawn," the 21st installment in the series of Dirk Pitt thrillers, hit bookshelves in mid-November and quickly reached No. 4 on the New York Times fiction best-seller list.
The novel finds Pitt, his long-time love Loren Smith and twin adult children Dirk Jr. and Summer, battling a villain who is attempting to restore the Ottoman Empire in a way that could bring the Middle East into a new and bloody war.
Created by Clive Cussler in the 1970s, the Pitt novels have been among the most successful series in modern times for publishers G.P. Putnam's Sons, an imprint of the Penguin Group. They have amassed more than 100 million in sales, worldwide.
Ocean adventurer Pitt predates Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan and Dan Brown's Robert Langdon, and as the 79-year-old Cussler grew older, he brought in son Dirk to keep cranking out the novels. And Dirk Cussler, for one, is determined to keep them coming.
"I don't want it to be going away," Dirk Cussler told Reuters of the Pitt adventures. "As long as the fans keep reading them. There are no plans for his demise."
If there is one thing the younger Cussler knows when he sees it, it is a growing business. He holds an advance business degree from the University of California-Berkeley, and he worked in finance at Motorola before joining his dad.
His first Pitt book with his father, 2004's "Black Wind", told of an attempted attack on the United States with poisonous gas, and Dirk Cussler is quick to admit there was some trepidation on the part of father and son before it was submitted to their publisher. Yet, it went on to prove successful enough for a second collaboration and more.
"I think somewhere in the back of my mind I figured I would try to write a book, but certainly I never had sights on doing the Pitt stuff," Dirk Cussler said.
The novel finds Pitt, his long-time love Loren Smith and twin adult children Dirk Jr. and Summer, battling a villain who is attempting to restore the Ottoman Empire in a way that could bring the Middle East into a new and bloody war.
Created by Clive Cussler in the 1970s, the Pitt novels have been among the most successful series in modern times for publishers G.P. Putnam's Sons, an imprint of the Penguin Group. They have amassed more than 100 million in sales, worldwide.
Ocean adventurer Pitt predates Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan and Dan Brown's Robert Langdon, and as the 79-year-old Cussler grew older, he brought in son Dirk to keep cranking out the novels. And Dirk Cussler, for one, is determined to keep them coming.
"I don't want it to be going away," Dirk Cussler told Reuters of the Pitt adventures. "As long as the fans keep reading them. There are no plans for his demise."
If there is one thing the younger Cussler knows when he sees it, it is a growing business. He holds an advance business degree from the University of California-Berkeley, and he worked in finance at Motorola before joining his dad.
His first Pitt book with his father, 2004's "Black Wind", told of an attempted attack on the United States with poisonous gas, and Dirk Cussler is quick to admit there was some trepidation on the part of father and son before it was submitted to their publisher. Yet, it went on to prove successful enough for a second collaboration and more.
"I think somewhere in the back of my mind I figured I would try to write a book, but certainly I never had sights on doing the Pitt stuff," Dirk Cussler said.
