The Wrecker

Detective Isaac Bell travels the early-twentieth-century American railways, driven by a sense of justice and a determination to stop a new mastermind reigning terror on a crucial express line in this #1 New York Times-bestselling series.

A year of financial panic and labor unrest, 1907 sees train wrecks, fires, and explosions sabotage the Southern Pacific Railroad's Cascades express line. Desperate for help the railroad hires the fabled Van Dorn Detective Agency. Van Dorn's best man, Isaac Bell, quickly discovers a mysterious saboteur haunting the hobo jungles of the West. Known only as the Wrecker, he recruits vulnerable accomplices from the down-and-out to attack the railroad, and then kills them afterward. The Wrecker traverses the vast spaces of the American West as if he had wings, striking wherever he pleases, causing untold damage and loss of human life. Who is he? What does he want? Is he a striker? An anarchist? A revolutionary determined to displace the "privileged few"? A criminal mastermind engineering some as yet unexplained scheme?

Whoever he is, whatever his motives, the Wrecker knows how to create maximum havoc, and Bell senses that he is far from done--that, in fact, the Wrecker is building up to a grand act unlike anything he has committed before. If Bell doesn't stop him in time, more than a railroad could be at risk--it could be the future of the entire country.

Author: Clive Cussler, Justin Scott
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Published: 10/26/2010
Pages: 592
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 7.52h x 4.30w x 1.23d
ISBN: 9780425237700
Audience: Young Adult

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6
Point Value: 20
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 135089 / Wrecker


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 09/01/2012 pg. 142

About the Author
Clive Cussler is the author of more than fifty books in five bestselling series, including Dirk Pitt, NUMA Files, Oregon Files, Isaac Bell, and Fargo. His life nearly parallels that of his hero Dirk Pitt. Whether searching for lost aircraft or leading expeditions to find famous shipwrecks, he and his NUMA crew of volunteers have discovered more than seventy-five lost ships of historic significance, including the long-lost Confederate submarine Hunley, which was raised in 2000 with much press publicity. Like Pitt, Cussler collects classic automobiles. His collection features more than eighty examples of custom coachwork. Cussler lives in Arizona and Colorado.

Justin Scott is the author of thirty-one novels, including The Shipkiller and Normandie Triangle; the Ben Abbott detective series; six thrillers under his pen name Paul Garrison; and his coauthorship with Cussler of The Wrecker, The Spy, The Race, The Thief, The Striker, The Bootlegger, The Assassin, The Gangster, and The Cutthroat. Scott lives in Connecticut.