Cold Fire is the latest instalment in the NUMA Files series, from Graham Brown, continuing the adventures of NUMA’s Director of Special Projects, Kurt Austin, and his partner Joe Zavala.

This was my first time picking up a book from the NUMA Files, although I’ve read more than a handful of the Dirk Pitt Adventures over the years, including my recent 50th Anniversary Review of Raise the Titanic! And of course, I’ve been following The Oregon Files for the last few years, ever since Mike Maden took over.

Cold Fire is a geopolitically charged techno-thriller that pits its heroes against a dying villain with apocalyptic ambitions, against the backdrop of USA-China tensions that could hardly feel more contemporary. Graham Brown delivers a well-crafted, intelligent adventure novel that respects its readers’ intelligence, earns it thrills, and leaves the world barely, and by the skin of its teeth, intact. Cold Fire’s villain is genuinely memorable, its geopolitical canvas is timely without being polemical, and its climax—an aging cargo plane flown too low and too fast by a man who insists he doesn’t know how to land it—delivers the kind of breathless, slightly absurd action that the Cussler brand has always done best.

Longtime readers of Cussler books will be at home with Cold Fire and new readers will find it incredibly easy to slip into. If you recently enjoyed Cold Zero from Ward Larsen, or are looking forward to The Coldest War from M.P. Woodward, then you will also enjoy the High North setting for this book. From a technical perspective, if you enjoyed The Cardinal of the Kremlin from Tom Clancy, or Bogey Spades from Jack Stewart, then strap in for the EAGL weapon—a laser system capable of neutralizing an entire nuclear arsenal without reciprocal destruction. Cold Fire is a compelling techno-thriller.

Spoilers ahead

The novel opens on a burning freighter somewhere in the South China Sea. A Chinese special forces unit swoops in by helicopter to intercept a smuggler known only as Ahab—a shadowy criminal who has been dumping radioactive waste at sea and trafficking stolen weapons. Kurt Austin is already on the scene. In the chaos, he blasts a container of toxic sludge that drenches Ahab, poisoning him with heavy metals and radioactive compounds that will slowly destroy him from the inside.

This prologue does elegant double work: it establishes Kurt’s impulsive heroism and simultaneously plants the seed of the central villain’s motivation. Ahab survives, but is now a man on a ticking clock, consumed not by greed or ideology but by something more primal and tragic—revenge.

The main plot kicks off months later, when a C-17 military transport carrying the EAGL (Enhanced Aerial Gunnery Laser), a classified prototype weapon capable of shooting down any aircraft or missile within hundreds miles, vanishes somewhere over the Arctic after being hijacked by insiders. The United States, Russia, and China are all scrambling to recover it. The President turns to NUMA. Kurt and Joe are dispatched to Norway to lead the search from aboard the research vessel Lyra.

What follows is a globe-spanning race that moves from the ice fields of the Barents Sea to the bars of a Norwegian harbor town, from a remote Philippine island to the bridges and rivers of Fuzhou, China. Ahab, it emerges, has allied with the Yellow Tigers—a fanatical Taiwanese independence cell willing to die for their cause—and has used stolen EAGL schematics to build his own version of the weapon. His plan: use the laser to provoke a war between China and the United States, framing American aircraft for the attack, and drag the world into catastrophe on his way out.

Kurt Austin is the main protagonist, the center of gravity for the novel. He’s confident, swaggering, and often acts before he’s finished thinking. His demeanor is austere and his action somewhat reckless, but he’s a self-possessed man of conviction.

Joe Zavala provides the warmth and comic relief. He’s a helicopter pilot of virtuosic skill, a mechanical genius, and an incorrigible comedian who deploys one-liners the way Kurt deploys his fists—efficiently and at the right moment. The partnership between the two men is one of the book’s pleasures, and Brown plays it well, giving them dialogue with both genuine texture and constant banter.

Major Gushan of the People’s Liberation Army Navy is the most interesting figure in the novel. He’s the kind of character that elevates a thriller above genre competence: a Chinese military operative who is neither cartoon villain nor convenient ally, but a man of genuine honor operating within a system that does not always reward it. His arc in Cold Fire—from adversary in Norway to crucial witness in the Chinese command bunker—is the book’s most satisfying dramatic theme.

Ahab deserves particular credit as a villain. Brown resists the temptation to make him cartoonishly evil. He’s dying, his organs riddled with tumors, he’s injecting himself with cocktails of painkillers and amphetamines to stay upright long enough to see his plan through. His rage is comprehensible; he was poisoned by his clash with Kurt Austin in the prologue, and the wreckage of his life, his health, his shadow-world of pleasures and retreats, is laid directly at Austin’s feet. He’s not a man who wants to rule the world but one who wants, with his last strength, to see it burn to the ground.

Rand and Prudence (Pru)—a South African brother-and-sister smuggling team who fall into Kurt’s orbit—provide texture and welcome comic relief. Rand is flamboyant, unreliable, and oddly endearing; Pru is the calm, mechanically brilliant counterweight who actually gets things done. They feel like characters with a life beyond the plot’s demands, which really intrigues me. I’d love to see them return in the series and play a greater part.

The EAGL weapon is explicitly framed as a strategic game-changer: whoever possesses it gains the ability to wage war without fear of retaliation. The novel asks, quietly but persistently, whether such a weapon would make the world safer or simply make aggression less costly.

The Taiwan subplot, driven by the Yellow Tigers, is handled with more nuance than might be expected. The Tigers are not portrayed as straightforward fanatics; their willingness to die is rooted in a genuine conviction that war between Taiwan and China is inevitable, and that it is better to choose your moment than to wait for it. The tragedy is that they have been used by Ahab, who could not care less about Taiwan—they are simply the most motivated available workforce for a suicide mission. This manipulation of idealism by nihilism is one of Brown’s sharper observations in the book.

The USA-China dynamic, meanwhile, avoids any lazy demonization. Both nations are shown as capable of both honor and cynicism; the Chinese high command’s decision to hold back its counterattack—partly from genuine uncertainty, partly from the cold calculation that Ahab’s laser might fall intact into their hands—is morally complex in a way that reflects how great powers actually behave. Gushan’s decision to break into the command bunker and fight for the truth at personal cost is the counterpoint: institutional self-interest defeated, briefly, by individual conscience.

Brown’s prose is a smooth and comfortable read, which suits the genre perfectly and keeps the momentum going. He writes action with clarity and confidence. The low-altitude chase along the Min River through Fuzhou, with two aging cargo jets weaving between bridge towers and power lines at high speed, is genuinely thrilling. Joe’s flying is rendered with the kind of earned swagger that only a pilot like Brown can pull off convincingly.

Cold Fire is a great read and has convinced me to continue with the series. I really enjoyed the adventure, the techno-thrills, and the way that the novel immediately made me feel at home. The High North setting is very current and the laser tech is captivating.

Cold Fire is available to pre-order now, and is published June 2, 2026.