The Navigator - Clive Cussler

The plot:
Ancient treasure -girl in need of saving - Kirk to the rescue in outrageous fashion - slowly unravelling plot to put world in chaos - Kirk to the rescue.

Most Clive Cussler Novels begin with a story set hundreds of years ago about lost civilisations and hidden treasures to then fast forward to one of his can-do-nothing-wrong Heroes in the present day.

And that's one of the reasons i like reading these books.There's always a bit of history involved and references to things I've probably never heard about. This one isn't any less different, but awesome nonetheless.
The Navigator has stuff to do with King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba - people you wouldn't normally google about.

The jacket cover reads:

Years ago, an ancient Phoenician statue known as the Navigator was stolen from the Baghdad Museum, and there are men who would do anything to get their hands on it. Their first victim is a crooked antiquities dealer, murdered in cold blood. Their second very nearly is a UN investigator who, were it not for the timely assistance of Austin and Zavala, would now be at the bottom of a watery grave.

What's so special about this statue? Austin wonders. The search for answers
will take the NUMA team on an astonishing odyssey through time and space, one
that encompasses no less than the lost treasures of King Solomon, a mysterious
packet of documents personally encoded by Thomas Jefferson, and a top secret
scientific project that could change the world forever.

And that's before the surprises really begin . . .

Rich with all the hair-raising action and endless invention that have become Cussler's hallmarks, The Navigator is Clive's best yet.

I love the Dirk Pitt books over the Kirk Austin ones, and personally Inca Gold was one of the best, but this one comes a close second or third.

OK, the plot is the same in pretty much all the books.

But then, that is not why one reads these books... its the outrageous stuff he makes his heroes do in the movie that make you want to read on, no matter how out of the world their antics are. I've stayed up nights wanting to turn the next page on these books. Even during the exams when i should have been trying to read stuff for the first time so i could spill it out all the next day on the paper.

Lotsa people think the Cussler books with his NUMA guys atleast are too larger than life and have too much of hero worship on them.. But i absolutely love these books.
I'm not trading my collection.
A Lost cause I am.