The books are set in the early years of the 20th century and feature the adventures of Van Dorn agency detective Isaac Bell.
While the books have "Clive Cussler" in Really Big Letters on the covers I suspect the actual writing was dong by Justin Scott. Honestly he deservers at least equal billing as he's been producing quality thrillers for years such as The Shipkiller, Normande Triangle and A Pride of Royals, all of which are among my favourite novels.
The Bell series actually started with The Chase authored by Clive Cussler alone. This was followed by Justin Scott collaborations The Wrecker in 2009 and The Spy in 2010.
Today is the official publication date of The Race, at least in hardback in the UK I note that the trade paperback appeared in bookshops last month.
However Amazon and other sites are already listing the next in the series, The Thief, for publication as early as March 2012.
All the UK editions feature striking cover art by Larry Rostant. I quite enjoy how the art focuses on early 1900s tenchonlguy such as the steam engine, the dreadnought, an early aeroplane and what I assume is the Mauretania on The Thief as it's mentioned in the blurb.
Given the setting opf the books there are inevetiable hints of the tensions between the great powers of the time and the drift towards war. The books are essentuiall adventure stories however Scott also includes a nice amount of period detail such as a turn of phrase. I also have detected at least one mention of a character from one of his own books, namely the main character from A Pride of Royals which is set not long after the Bell books.
