Clive Cussler‘s literary fantasies and larger-than-life exploits swirled together for decades. He wrote 85 books, selling no fewer than 100 million copies, and located scores of shipwrecks… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!
Clive Cussler, the author and maritime adventurer who captivated millions with his best-selling tales of suspense and who, between books, led scores of expeditions to find historic shipwrecks and lost treasures in the ocean depths, died on Monday at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 88.
His death was confirmed by a spokeswoman for his publisher, Penguin Random House. No specific cause was given.
Mayan jungles, undersea kingdoms, ghost ships, evil forces out to destroy the world, beautiful women, heroes modeled on himself — Mr. Cussler’s vivid literary fantasies and his larger-than-life exploits swirled together for four decades, spinning off more than 85 books and locating almost as many shipwrecks.
A college dropout who once pumped gas and wrote advertising copy, Mr. Cussler resorted to a hoax to get his first book published. But his work — mostly action thrillers of the James Bond-Indiana Jones kind, plus nonfiction accounts of his marine quests and a few children’s books — made him a global celebrity.
His books sales have been staggering — more than 100 million copies, with vast numbers sold in paperback at airports. Translated into 40 or so languages, his books reached The New York Times’s best-seller lists more than 20 times, as he amassed a fortune estimated at $80 million.
Mr. Cussler looked like the hero of Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” You had to imagine the battered straw hat and the tired shoulders hunched over a gunwale, but after years of roaming oceans and diving for wrecks, he had that seafarer’s husky build and sunburned cheeks, and his face, more sea dog than bibliophile, was flecked with gray: the grizzled beard, the mustache, the eyes, the gray-white hair.
Often compared to the thrillers churned out by Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum and Ian Fleming, the Cussler novels featured formulaic plots, one- or two-word titles (“Cyclops,” “Dragon,” “Inca Gold,” “Poseidon’s Arrow”) and frequently a recurring hero, Dirk Pitt, an undersea explorer who cheats death and saves the world as he foils the diabolical plots of megalomaniac villains, while satisfying his taste for exotic cars and lusty women.
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