Pacific Vortex! was published by Bantam Books in 1983, though it was actually the first Dirk Pitt novel Cussler wrote, completed in the late 1960s. Cussler declined to publish it for over a decade, considering it apprentice work, and it reached print only after the success of Raise the Titanic! created demand for more Pitt adventures.
Pitt is on leave in Hawaii when he discovers a message capsule on the beach from the USS Starbuck, a nuclear submarine that vanished six months earlier somewhere in the “Pacific Vortex” — a region where ships have been disappearing for decades. The investigation leads to an underwater colony ruled by a megalomaniacal figure who has been capturing ships and using their technology to build a hidden submarine empire.
The novel is rawer than Cussler’s mature work — the prose is choppier, the villains more cartoonish, and the plot relies on science fiction elements (the underwater city) that Cussler would later avoid in favor of more plausible scenarios. But the essential Pitt is already present: the irreverent humor, the marine competence, the willingness to tackle impossible situations with improvised solutions. Cussler’s foreword acknowledges the novel’s weaknesses with characteristic candor, calling it “an embryo that I felt not quite ready to birth.”
Collecting Pacific Vortex!
First edition (Bantam Books, New York, 1983): Mass market paperback original.
Market values:
- First edition paperback, fine: $20–$50
- Very good: $5–$15
- Later hardcover editions: $10–$30