The Ghost City

Navy pilot–turned–land surveyor Ethan Cain tangles with a sinister Chinese businessman in Pote’s solid if familiar sequel to Blood and Treasure. Ethan’s company, Pathfinder Survey Systems, is mapping the sediment of Vietnam’s Mekong River when an explosion almost kills him and uncovers the hull of an ancient Chinese sailboat. Meanwhile, wealthy Chinese construction CEO Shan Zhang is busy stealing the world’s supply of river sand to make concrete to sell. (In an aside that illustrates Pote’s preoccupation with facts and figures, he notes that the illicit sand trade tops $700 billion worldwide, with demand increasing by 50 billion metric tons per year.) Plotwise, Zhang’s river operations are just the tip of the sand dune, as Ethan’s girlfriend, investigative journalist Lana Foster, discovers when she travels to Antarctica to interview Zhang at his icy, modernist lair. Zhang is planning on killing her because she knows too much about his crooked business—and because he’s a madman with a plan to destroy the world. As in the previous book, Pote is working in the old-school vein of Clive Cussler, and he proves an effective emulator. What this lacks in originality it makes up for in sheer swashbuckling. Agent: Mark Tavani, David Black Agency. (June)