Well, this book was a timely reread. The entire plot is about Canada joining the US – although Cussler calls the conjoined nations the United States of Canada, which would undoubtedly cause President Chump’s remaining brain cell to combust.

Cussler’s formula has always been explicit – an historical mystery is the key to a present-day conspiracy, and Dirk Pitt is dragged into an investigation regarding one or the other, and so ends up resolving both. The novels are also set a decade or two ahead of when they were written, and often feature some sort of advanced tech.

Night Probe! (1981, USA) opens with a provincial railway station robbery in 1914, which nets little and prevents the two station staff from halting an express train heading for a bridge brought down in a storm. On the train were millions of dollars of gold bullion, and a Canadian official with important documents. Coincidentally, around the same time, a passenger ship heading for Britain is sunk in the St Lawrence River. On board is a British official with important documents.

Commander Heidi Milligan, introduced in the previous book, is studying for a PhD in American History, and she stumbles across a reference to a treaty between the US and Great Britain signed in 1914. But she can find nothing else about the treaty. Meanwhile, the head of a Quebecois separatist organisation tries to assassinate the prime minister of Canada. Somehow, news of the treaty, copies of which were carried on the crashed train and sunken ship, reaches the ears of the UK government, and they send a retired MI6 agent to the US to ensure the documents are never found.

Pitt uses NUMA equipment to dive on the wreck in the St Lawrence and, despite attempted sabotage by the British and Quebecois, manages to retrieve a copy of the treaty. Unfortunately, it’s unreadable. So Pitt goes looking for the crashed train, but there’s no sign of the wreck in the river below the destroyed bridge. Pitt eventually figures out the location of the train, and finds the treaty.

Night Probe! was published in 1981. While Cussler got a lot wrong (in it the USSR still exists, for example; not that he was actually trying to predict the future), I’m amused the plot is structured around the abortive sale of Canada to the US by Britain in 1914. And the desire by both the Canadians and USians to merge in the year the novel is set. Recent events have shown the Canadians are more than happy not being part of the US – as indeed is Greenland, and, in fact, every other fucking nation on the fucking planet – and I suspect the same attitude pretty much held true back in 1981. 

I’d remembered Night Probe! as one of the better Dirk Pitt novels, and it’s proven the best so far. Which doesn’t actually make it a good novel, just a good Cussler novel, which is not exactly a high bar. Trump’s deranged pronouncements since taking office, however, added a little extra to the reading. If only that were the only impact of his lunacy…