DAVID GIBBINS. Atlantis. Dell, paperback; 1st US printing, September 2006.

      —, Crusader Gold. Bantam, paperback; 1st US printing, September 2007.

   Gibbins is described as a Canadian with a Ph.D. in archaeology from Cambridge, a university lecturer, a “world authority on ancient shipwrecks and sunken cities,” and “currently divid[ing] his time between fieldwork, England and Canada.” He’s also writing adventure novels, but I suppose that goes without saying.

   I have included Gibbins’ professional achievements, only because they are substantially reflected in his fiction as sometimes interminable descriptions of scientific and other data that lend the works some authority (I suppose) but also tend to weigh them down.

   Marine archaeologist Jack Howard works with a team of experts to discover the site of Atlantis and the lost golden menorah of Jerusalem. He is of course up against powerful and unprincipled opponents, and there’s a great deal of derring-do in exotic locations, with Howard and his companions ultimately besting the dastardly villains who dog their every move.

   A more hard-science series than the more romantic adventure series by Paul Christopher, reviewed here not long ago.

   I could trace my affection for this stuff all the way back to my adolescent infatuation with Jack Armstrong and the Don Sturdy series, but that sounds too academic for my present non-academic role. It’s enough to say that, for the nonce, I can’t get enough of these adventure series that keep proliferating, and when you see me setting off on one of these treks, I wouldn’t blame you if you headed in another direction with all due haste.