As usual, Clive Cussler stays right on top of current world events in his latest Dirk Pitt novel, Arctic Drift. This time, not surprisingly, the book set in the year 2011 revolves around the financial crisis and global warming.

The bad guy of the story, Mitchell Goyette, is a Canadian energy tycoon with a public facade of green technology and renewable resource businesses. However, his dark underbelly conceals heavy involvement in oil and natural gas.

The United States faces a financial meltdown, aggravated by the threat of an international boycott if the country does not decrease its carbon dioxide emissions from coal fired power plants. Canada holds the key to America’s salvation in the form or an enormous wealth of natural gas reserves.

The sitting American president, who in 2011 is neither Democratic nor Republican but an independent, hopes to use Canadian natural gas to replace coal for producing electricity and even for powering cars converted to run on natural gas.

However, Goyette is in a perfect position to take advantage of the United State’s desperate gamble, and he does so without conscience. To the Canadian public, Goyette is an environmental hero who invests millions in wind power and carbon sequestration. Unbeknownst to the masses, he’s unscrupulously involved in every dirty industry that will make him more money, in particular the oil sands of Athabasca, Alberta, and the Melville natural gas fields of the Canadian Arctic, over which he has full control.

Promising the U.S. government a nearly unlimited supply of the Melville natural gas to help solve the American energy crisis, and consequently also the financial crisis brought on by soaring oil prices, Goyette underhandedly signs a secret deal with the Chinese to instead sell them the gas at 10% above market value, with no intention of keeping his word to the U.S.

(In the real world, any business in breach of such a huge and important contract would probably not survive. But it’s a good set-up for an intriguing story line.)

Even so, the backstabbing of the United States as a business-partner is the least of Mitchell Goyette’s shenanigans. He also bribes high ranking Canadian officials, creates toxic waste that kills wildlife and people, pays to have property stolen or vandalized, and for his opposition to be assassinated.

Of course, what Goyette fails to take into consideration is Dirk Pitt, the hero of twenty novels by Clive Cussler, including this most recent installment. In the end, Pitt manages to wreak havoc with all of Goyette’s ill-willed plans.

Arctic Drift is a seamless joint effort between Clive Cussler and son, Dirk Cussler. It is difficult to tell their penmanship apart. Whatever sections of the book were written by Dirk Cussler, he did an outstanding job of emulating his father’s inimitable style. (Oxymoron intended!)

All in all, Arctic Drift is an excellent action thriller. It’s does not have the cover-to-cover non-stop action of some of the older Dirk Pitt novels by Cussler, but it does have quite enough action, plus the story line is brilliant and intriguing and keeps you wanting to read more. And as always in Dirk Pitt’s world, the villains are as clever as they are evil, and the heroes as pure as Arctic snow.

Britt Hellman lives in North Carolina with her spouse and three children. She operates her own copywriting company from home. Clive Cussler has been one of her favorite writers since reading his Trojan Odyssey, a Dirk Pitt Novel, in 2003. She writes reviews like this one on Arctic Drift, by Clive and Dirk Cussler, for the fun of sharing that excitement.