Oh man, I couldn't post in this thread without mentioning my guiltiest guilty pleasure book series: Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt series. If you thought Twilight meant never having to say you're kidding, you haven't seen anything yet.
(Massive spoilers below, but really, were you planning on reading these anyway?)
One book,
Cyclops, has Dirk, Al (Dirk's sidekick), and Generic Female Sidekick ending up kidnapped by a secret Soviet base hidden underneath Cuba. Not necessarily weird on its own - it's actually fairly vanilla as Dirk Pitt books go - but it's what comes later that makes it a true Dirk Pitt book:
- Spoiler: open/close
I don't remember how Al or GFS escape, but Dirk manages to save himself by sneaking out of the compound, getting in a bathtub equipped with a motor, and boating it to Florida. He almost doesn't make it DUN DUN DUN, but a Navy boat rescues him just in time.
All while this is going on, drama is going down on the moon. The US has had a self-sufficient moon base for 10 years now (the book is set in 1989), and the astronauts who maintain it need to come home. BUT the Soviet (or was it Cuban? I don't remember) government just can't let that happen. They send their own cosmonauts up to murder the astronauts while they're still on the moon. Of course their plain is foiled and the astronauts are saved, but...moon base. 10 years. 1989.
The rest of my memory of Cyclops is kind of hazy, but I do remember that at some point Dirk ends up having to land or lead someone through landing a space shuttle. Oh, and the book ends with Dirk finding a long-lost solid gold statue from El Dorado.
Cyclops is pretty insane, but I still think
Sahara (which was made into a movie with Matthew McConaughey a couple years ago, though I don't think anyone remembers it) takes the crazy cake:
- Spoiler: open/close
Dirk and Al are in Mali doing something for the National Underwater and Marine Agency. After completing the NUMA mission, Dirk has plans to uncover vital evidence hidden in the Sahara desert he's been tracking for years, but more on that later. Shit happens, and they figure out that toxic waste or something is leaking into the Niger River, causing a red algae bloom, blah blah, whatever. The point is, the world's oceans will be overrun by the algae, rendering Earth uninhabitable, if Dirk, Al, and Generic Female Sidekick, a UN scientist, don't do something to stop it. BUT Corrupt African Leader and Slimy French Businessman (the ones causing the toxic waste dump DUN DUN DUN) just can't let that happen.
Somehow Dirk and Al are separated from GFS and left to wander for eternity in the Sahara desert. UNTIL they're saved by what appears to be a mirage...but is really Clive Cussler in a beautiful antique car (oh did I mention? Antique cars are Dirk's hobby). This isn't even Clive Cussler's first appearance; he had cameoed in Dragon, which came right before Sahara in the series, where he ended up facing Dirk in an antique car race (right before the Generic Female Sidekick in that book gets kidnapped by Evil Japanese Businessman). He saves them, takes them toward town, and Dirk and Al are back in the game.
The rest of the book is just generic Dirk Pitt adventure, the good guys win, the GFS and the world are forever indebted to Dirk. BUT the book can't end until Dirk finds what he came to Mali to find...a Confederate battleship hidden in the desert containing - what else? - Abraham Lincoln's preserved corpse. You see, the Confederacy had kidnapped Lincoln, threw him on a battleship, and left for the open ocean, eventually ending up in Africa. The entire John Wilkes Booth assassination was faked.
That's really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Dirk Pitt. I've only read six books in the twenty-book series. They are easily the most ridiculous, awful, anti-feminist, trashy books I have ever read, but I just. can't. stop.
