David Roberts's Reviews > Dark Watch

I am reviewing the novel Dark Watch by Clive Cussler et al which is a very good adventure story and which I bought from a car boot sale. This book is part of the Oregon series about a state of the art state which contains mercenaries with hearts of gold who do work for money but are the heroes of the story and are led by Juan Cabrillo. The ship is nuclear powered and almost like a warship disguised as a freight vessel. This story sees the North Koreans siding with the Syrians in capturing vessels in the far east and doing people trafficking from China to the west. Lots of vessels are being captured by pirates and plundered and their crews being massacred regardless whether they put up resistance or not. The Americans are worried if they wade in with military action they will get problems with terrorists not to mention anger the international community so they hire the Oregon. It does turn out many of the refugees are being murdered by the pirates and that this suits the traffickers just fine. I enjoyed this book and their is a happy ending. This book also does a good job of explaining some of the political problems in the far east. The refugees have to pay upwards of $30,000 to travel with these people traffickers which normally is paid off by the refugees working in places like sweat shops on favourable terms to the traffickers. If these people quietly disappear the family is enslaved and the traffickers have a win win situation. If these people just disappear the traffickers save a load of money that would normally go on travel, food and accommadation etc. This book was written in 2005 when there was also bad feeling in certain quarters about Saudi Arabia siding with America in the First Gulf War.There is a little bit about that in the story.