Clive Cussler
Before most thriller writers were sending heroes across collapsing ice shelves or into sunken wartime submarines, Clive Cussler was already there, charting the coordinates. Born in 1931 in Aurora, Illinois, and raised in Southern California, Cussler grew up close enough to the Pacific to feel its pull. The ocean was not background scenery for him, it was a question mark. After serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War as a flight engineer and mechanic, he moved into advertising, where he learned the art of momentum, how to seize attention quickly and never let it drift. That instinct would later define his brand of adventure…