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Summary
Summary
In this adventure in the #1 New York Times bestselling series, husband-and-wife treasure hunters Sam and Remi Fargo must out-pace a self-made millionaire in pursuit of an incredible fortune...
Thousands of years ago, two superpowers of the ancient world went to war, and a treasure of immeasurable value was lost to the shadows of history.
In 1800, while crossing the Pennine Alps with his Grand Reserve Army, Napoleon Bonaparte stumbled across a startling discovery. Unable to transport it, he created an enigmatic map on the labels of twelve bottles of rare wine. When Napoleon died, the bottles disappeared--and the treasure was lost again.
Until now. Treasure-hunting husband-and-wife team Sam and Remi Fargo are exploring the Great Pocomoke Swamp in Maryland when they are shocked to discover a World War II German U-boat. Inside, they find a bottle taken from Napoleon's famous "Lost Cellar," and fascinated, they set out to find the rest of the collection. But another connoisseur of sorts is hunting his own prize, and the Lost Cellar is his key to finding it. That man is Hadeon Bondaruk, a half-Russian, half-Persian millionaire, and the treasure will be his, no matter what .
Author Notes
Clive Cussler was born in Aurora, Illinois on July 15, 1931. He attended Pasadena City College for two years before enlisting in the United States Air Force during the Korean War. After his discharge from the military, he worked first as a copywriter and later as a creative director for two of the nation's most successful advertising agencies. At that time, he wrote and produced radio and television commercials that won numerous international awards, including one at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
He began writing in 1965 and published his first novel featuring Dirk Pitt in 1973. His first non-fiction work, The Sea Hunters, was published in 1996. He has written over 50 books including the Dirk Pitt series, the NUMA Files series, Oregon Files series, Isaac Bell series, and the Fargo Adventure series.
He is the Chairman of NUMA (National Underwater and Marine Agency), a non-profit group which he founded. He and his crew of marine experts and NUMA volunteers have discovered over 60 historically significant underwater wreck sites.
Clive Cussler died on February 24, 2020 at the age of 88. (Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of this engaging first in a new series from bestseller Cussler (Inca Gold) and Blackwood (An Echo of War), Sam Fargo and his wife, Remi, trade quips while wading waist deep in a Maryland swamp in search of hidden treasure. The couple stumble across a WWII Nazi minisub, which contains an intact bottle of wine, apparently part of a collection known as Napoleon's Lost Cellar. The bottle has a riddle hidden in its label, the solution to which leads the Fargos to other lost bottles and eventually points the way to two solid gold Persian columns discovered by Napoleon and hidden in the Pennine Alps in 1800. The book's villain, Hadeon Bondaruk, who covets the columns and will do anything to get them, sends his henchmen after the Fargos. The clever duo manage to stay one small step ahead of the hired killers until everyone arrives at the inevitable boffo ending. Solidly in the Cussler tradition, this adventure thriller is sure to please new fans and old. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
If you're reading a novel, and you meet a fella called Hadeon Bondaruk, you just know it: this guy's a villain. Villains get the really cool names. Our heroes, on the other hand, a husband-and-wife team of professional treasure hunters, are Sam and Remi Fargo, OK names but not as memorable which kind of describes the novel, too: OK but not memorable. While exploring the Great Pocomoke Swamp in Delaware, Sam and Remi find, hidden away at the edge of a river, a World War II-era German mini-submarine. But how did it get there? And could the bottle of wine they find inside the sub really be part of a set of bottles on which the emperor Napoleon fashioned a map showing the hidden location of a pair of solid gold pillars, originally hidden in the Pennine Alps 2,500 years ago? Well, of course it could, and soon the Fargos are fighting for their very lives against the enormously powerful Bondaruk, who has a real taste for some old wine. The story moves at a brisk clip, and Hadeon is a scenery-chewing villain, but, finally, the book feels flat. If you read thrillers, you've seen most of this before, and done better, too (imagine, say, what James Rollins might do with this story). For Cussler devotees.--Pitt, David Copyright 2009 Booklist
