Reviews for Nighthawk

by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Cussler and Brown deliver another solid entry in the Kurt Austin series. This time out, Austin, head of the special-assignments team of NUMA, the National Underwater and Marine Agency, races against time to locate the wreckage of a remote-controlled experimental high-tech aircraft (it's actually a combination of airplane and spaceship) that has returned to Earth after three years in orbit. The Nighthawk disappeared during the landing procedure; it was carrying a payload that, if it were to unfreeze, might spark a global catastrophe. The pace is fast, the characters decently well drawn (although action takes priority over characterization), the story just believable enough to keep us from realizing how implausible it really is. Fans of the series will be satisfied.--Pitt, David Copyright 2017 Booklist


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Cussler and Brown (The Pharaoh's Secret, 2015, etc.) yank National Underwater and Marine Agency stalwart Kurt Austin off a Hawaiian beach where he's chasing big waves. He's needed to find the Nighthawk, an exotic spacecraft lost by the U.S. Air Force and the National Security Agency.The Nighthawk spent three years in orbit on a mission to harvest "mixed-state matter" from the polar magnetic field, only to be hijacked during its descent. Mixed-state matter must be kept at supercold temperatures. If the spacecraft isn't found before its cooling system quits, the matter and antimatter will annihilate one another in the proverbial Big Bang: an explosion equal to five times the world's nuclear weapons stockpile set off simultaneously. The authors don't so much develop characters as typecast them, though they do introduce a new heroine: Emily Townsend is drafted to work with Kurt as science support. With her take-no-prisoners style, she's known as Hurricane Emma to NSA co-workers. Ranging across the Pacific to the Andes, the tale is composed of multiple chase-and-fight scenes with Kurt, Emily, and NUMA cohorts escaping one trap only to fall into another. The dialogue is jaunty banter in the face of disaster. Science is simplified. Something called a Penning trap captures mixed-state matter, but its construction remains unexplained, as does Russia's fielding of modified surplus bombers capable of edge-of-space Nighthawk retrieval. The pace is hypersonic, pausing occasionally to highlight an interesting factoidEuropean diseases like smallpox reduced indigenous pre-Columbus populations by 95 percentbut there's time for the Russians to launch torpedoes at a NUMA submersible; uncover a triple agent/mole; and let loose deadly Chinese operatives from the Ministry of State Security's stash of "children that were never born." Cussler and company deliver another fun page-turner with a plot ranging from the highly improbable to the totally implausible. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.


Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kurt Austin of the National Underwater and Marine Agency has to track down an unmanned experimental aircraft, the Nighthawk, in bestseller Cussler's exciting 14th NUMA Files novel (after 2015's The Pharaoh's Secret, also coauthored with Brown). The Nighthawk went off course and disappeared as it was returning from a three-year mission in orbit. Kurt and his NUMA team, aided by the NSA's Emma Townsend, have seven days to "find and shut off a ticking bomb that could shake the very foundations of the Earth." It soon becomes apparent that there's more at stake concerning the secret aircraft than Emma is admitting. Also chasing the Nighthawk are Russian and Chinese forces, in particular a deadly Chinese operative, Daiyu, who works for the Ministry of State Security. Meanwhile, Kurt must deal with double and triple crosses from his supposed friends. Tension builds as our heroes race to save the planet. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.