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Apt. 3 by Ezra Jack Keats
Beekeeping for Beginners by Laurie R. King
Black Wind by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler
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Cat Comes Too by Hazel Hutchins
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The Last Camel Died at Noon by Elizabeth Peters
Lizard by Banana Yoshimoto
Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell
Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes by Salley Mavor
Sorcerers & Secretaries, Volume 1 by Amy Kim Ganter
Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen by Marilyn Chin
Sticks & Scones by Diane Mott Davidson
Stitch Head by Guy Bass
Storm Front by Jim Butcher
The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong
The Tenth Good Thing About Barney by Judith Viorst
The Three Pigs by David Wiesner
Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella
Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears by Verna Aardema
Winter Study by Nevada Barr
Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry for Your... Brains by Ryan Mecum

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Black Wind: 08/05/13

cover art

Black Windis by Clive Cussler is the eighteenth Dirk Pitt novel and the second one co-authored by son Dirk Cussler. Dirk Pitt Jr. is called into rescue some researchers mysteriously ill on a remote Aleutian island. It appears their illness (and the deaths of some others nearby) is related to the recent discovery of a WWII era submarine.

Two things in thrillers make me cringe: dirty bombs and airborne WMD. This one relies on a the latter — a WWII era chimera which combines a variety of airborne diseases into one super weapon. Except it's been sitting at the bottom of the ocean in a submarine for five decades.

Sure it's related to a Japanese plot, but if I were North Korean agent posing as a South Korean businessman and arms dealer, I'd stick to sarin gas. It's just as deadly and doesn't require tracking down old sunk submarines (and thus drawing unnecessary attention to one's self).

Black Wind would have been so much better had the submarine plot been a complete red herring. From reading other reviews, though, it appears the Cusslers were distracted with Hollywood's version of Sahara (and a failed law suit, therein).

Three stars

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