Cussler's 'Devil's Gate' doesn't disappoint

“Devil's Gate,” the ninth entry in the NUMA Files series and the first co-written by Graham Brown, delivers the thrills and excitement that readers expect from a Clive Cussler novel.

Sixty years ago, a plane carrying secret cargo crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Jump to the present. A scientist is kidnapped and a vessel is attacked by pirates. The crew of that ship is brutally eliminated, and the ship is sunk.

Kurt Austin of NUMA (National Underwater and Marine Agency) and his partner, Joe Zavala, investigate the sinking and discover a vast underwater graveyard of sunken boats and planes.

Is there a strong natural magnetic force at work?

The connecting thread is a bold African dictator with designs on an ultimate weapon that could destroy a city in the blink of an eye.

Austin and Zavala must stop him before Washington, D.C., becomes the first to fall.

The NUMA Files series has been hit-and-miss, but this is one of the best. The entire NUMA cast gets a chance to shine, including Dirk Pitt from Cussler's other novels.

The adventure reads like the best of the James Bond films with high-stake thrills and hair-raising stakes. The villains are a bit shallow, but the heroes more than make up for the thinness of the bad guys.

Brown proves to be a welcome addition to the Cussler group of co-authors.