High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Pacific Vortex! is an adventure novel by Clive Cussler. This is the sixth book released featuring the author`s primary protagonist, Dirk Pitt, though the author states that this was the first story that he wrote featuring the popular action hero. It was published after much internal debate, and a great deal of prompting from his friends, family and publisher. Cussler states in the Foreword that he feels it is not up to his usual standards and should be treated as sort of a historical curiosity.