CT-Rich
Contributor
Having read it more than 20 years ago, I would suggest Peter Benchley's The Deep. Pirates, drugs and wet tee-shirts, what more can a man want in his scuba fiction? I know there will be push back against Benchley because he also wrote Jaws, THE book many people blame for vilifying sharks. But, diving has such a rich history of true adventure stories, like Shadow Divers, The Last Dive, Setting the Hook, and just about anything by JYC, that fiction can be tough to top. The other problem with fiction about an activity like scuba, is that the activity should be the setting, not the plot. The Clive Cussler books sometimes have scuba, but the last one I personally read was written with a co-author, was absolute dreck. The plot was terrible, the diving followed made up rules of physics. Read the novels where he is the only author. I actually like the period pieces he starts many of his novels with, unfortunately, they end up letting you down after that.
Cussler did write some excellent non-fiction diving books, I would recommend The Sea Hunters, which is about his real life interest in historic shipwrecks.
Cussler did write some excellent non-fiction diving books, I would recommend The Sea Hunters, which is about his real life interest in historic shipwrecks.
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