Not exactly believable, but a decent action thriller with a geologist hero! ( )

This is the first in Dubrul's Philip Mercer series. He can be likedned to Clive Cussler - and he has indeed teemed up with Cussler to help further his works - but with a little harder edge and maybe a little bit more believable slant.

Vulcan's Forge is a non-stop bullit train ride with conspiracy on top of conspiracy. It tells the story tells of a 40-year plot contrived by the Russians, who want to own a newly risen underwater volcano 200 miles off Hawaii. Physicist Pytor Borodin and an American physicist who's studying the oceanic Bikini A-bomb test have independently discovered the same fact: that enormous underwater thermal heat, when mixed with lava, can produce the hardest fuel known to man vsllrf bikinium, which, once put to use, gives off more energy than is needed to burn it. Back in 1954, Borodin had also discovered that the thinnest part of the tectonic plate in the Pacific is just 200 miles past Hawaii. So the Reds secretly sink a ship carrying an A-bomb. The plan is to detonate it on the seafloor, creating a volcano whose lava can then be processed very cheaply for bikinium. But during the 40- year wait for this secret volcano to break to the surface, at which point it can be claimed as Soviet territory, the USSR empire collapses and a KGB officer decides to sell the whole plan for Vulcan's Forge to North Korea for $100 million. Enter Philip Mercer. A rich Japanese racist plots the secession of Hawaii, and Mercer, empowered by the US President, finds himself in cliffhangers nearly more outrageous than Clive Cussler or Ian Fleming could think up. For a first installment, this book is finely tuned with some strong, fresh writing. ( )