Clive Cussler’s Spartan Gold
Spartan Gold is the first in a new series by New York Times bestseller Clive Cussler in cooperation with action novel writer Grant Blackwood.
The books of this new series are called “Fargo Adventures,” so named after the book’s heroes, married couple Sam and Remi Fargo.
Independently wealthy, the Fargos have devoted their lives to their obsessive passion for archeological treasure hunting, and they do not shy away from any obstacles to find what they are looking for.
While the Fargo Adventures feature a new cast of characters and a slightly different action venue – treasure hunting – the telltale hallmarks of a true Cussler-novel that we have all come to love and expect still remain: Exotic cars, foods and drinks, as well as lots of excitement on, in and around water.
Spartan Gold follows Sam and Remi on the trail of Napoleon Bonaparte and twelve bottles from his legendary lost wine cellar, each with a clue written in code on the back of the label.
Naturally, their quest to unravel this mystery does not go unimpeded. Relentlessly on their heels are the hired ruffians of Bondaruk, a former Soviet freedom fighter from an ethnic minority group, who has since turned into a ruthless mafia billionaire.
At the end of the trail await two ancient Greek statues of pure gold, which were looted from Greece by Persian conqueror Xerxes the Great. Bondaruk has discovered through genealogy research that he is a direct descendant of Xerxes, and believes the treasure is his rightful inheritance, never mind that is was stolen from Greece.
The riddles on the wine-bottles lead the Fargos and their adversaries from a WWII German submarine in the Great Pocomoke Swamp of Maryland to the Bahamas and through much of Europe including Monaco, Croatia, Italy, Germany, and Ukraine: not necessarily in that sequence.
Spartan Gold is a solid, action-filled treasure hunting novel in the spirit of The Da Vinci Code. It is also distinctly a Clive Cussler novel with all of what that entails. Another guaranteed New York Times bestseller, in other words.