The Saboteurs

Detective Isaac Bell is present by chance when a senator survives an assassination attempt, and his investigation quickly leads to the newly completed Panama Canal and the violent insurgent group known as the Red Vipers, who are determined to prevent American control of the waterway. Cussler and Du Brul ground the twelfth Isaac Bell novel in the geopolitical anxieties of the canal's construction era, where the stakes of international control over a single stretch of water were genuinely enormous.

Scott Brick delivers the historical action with the authority that has made him a staple of this series, his voice matching the physical confidence of Bell himself. Brick handles the dual storylines, one set in Washington and one in Panama's dense terrain, with consistent energy, and his pacing through the novel's action sequences is precise. At just over eleven hours, The Saboteurs is a well-crafted addition to a series that has found its formula and executes it reliably.