Who is Penguin's biggest-selling living fiction author: Marian Keyes, Zadie Smith, Nick Hornby, or Eoin Colfer? None of the above. Try Clive Cussler, the prodigious American writer hailed on his book jackets as the "grandmaster of adventure".

It is hard to dismiss that as pure hyperbole. A sprightly 76, Cussler turns out two or three outlandish techno-thrillers a year, in association with a team of co-writers including his son Dirk. Although Penguin's own sales figures put Keyes, Colfer and Hornby ahead, Nielsen BookScan records that more than 464,000 books bearing the Cussler stamp sold in the UK last year—more than any of his Penguin stablemates. That's double the number he was selling five years ago.

Cussler leads a pack of "big beasts" including his compatriot Jack Higgins (79), and Brits Frederick Forsyth (68) and Wilbur Smith (74). They all started their careers in the 1960s and '70s, made their names around the world with an iconic novel, and fell out of fashion in the late 1980s and '90s. Now they're back—and they're bigger than ever.

The exploits of their ageless, larger-than-life heroes—Sean Dillon, Dirk Pitt and Kurt Austin—span the continents and the centuries. Taking in the military, politics, terrorism and ancient societies, each of their new hardbacks reaches new heights. The big four together sold more than a million copies off all editions in the UK alone last year; export sales to international markets are booming.

"These guys were the best and still are," Wayne Brookes, HarperCollins deputy publishing director, says. "They've been producing one book a year [or every other year] and have just kept going. The market did seem to be moving away in the 1990s, but they stayed around, kept producing, then suddenly they're back at the top again. People said they wouldn't come back but 80% of them have." ...[read the full article]

As written in The Bookseller, 20/08/2007