After a global environmental disaster, mankind has rebuilt, but its
demons are still there. Greed, arrogance ... Romane Pennac fights those
who would abuse nature once again. Volume 1 of 2 of this sequel to
Mermaid Project. Two years have passed since the event of Mermaid
Project, and Romane and Brahim have paid the price of their courage
and integrity. Ignored, even censored, by their superiors, they're now reduced to taking lousy private eye jobs to earn a living.
Meanwhile, though, the same cetaceans whose advanced intelligence the
UN had refused to believe in are attacking fishing trawlers ... with
rockets! Before long, the authorities ask our two investigators to
take their old jobs back ...
Romane has gone to Brazil, hoping to renew contact with Delphis, her
dolphin friend, and find an explanation to the ongoing attacks by sea
mammals against human ships and ports. Meanwhile, Brahim and Kruger
continue their investigations in Mozambique. But their enemies, the
white supremacists who still run Algapower, and their terrorist
allies from the American White Army, know they're being hunted, and
have no intention of being stopped again. A fight for the future of
several species begins ...
In Chiquito, capital of Palombia, there are nasty rumours flying of
numerous orphans and poor kids going missing. And indeed, one
evening, the son of a rich family is kidnapped along with a handful
of street urchins after he sneaked out of school. The children are
soon put to work in a clandestine gold mining camp. But the illegal
prospectors are horrible polluters, and that's already brought them into a very angry Marsupilami's sights ...
Mortimer is brought to the camp of General Li Hsi, the Chinese
warlord, where he is reunited with a seriously injured Nasir. The
professor was kidnapped in order to recover the archaeological proof
of the general's imperial lineage, but also to repair the Red Wing, a
formidable combat aircraft Olrik unwittingly delivered. While Blake
moves heaven and earth to find him and protect Hong Kong, Mortimer escapes to go in search of the only thing that can save Nasir: a
legendary pearl ...
It's been several months since the events of The Yellow M, but the
evil of Professor Septimus still echoes around London. Important
figures of the capital's jet set come together around the
questionable values the mad scientist defended. Olrik is forced to
resort to opium in order to forget he was guinea pig. As for
Mortimer, he too is trying, albeit for more humanist reasons, to revive certain aspects of Septimus's work - to Blake's extreme
concern...
1944. England is still locked in a struggle to the death with Nazi Germany. But already a new threat looms among the peaks of the Himalayas. For now, though, Squadron Leader Blake, having saved London from a German prototype, is assigned to a top secret mission, during which he meets with an old friend he hasn't seen since India: Philip Mortimer. Soon, the pair are introduced to an officer working for Allied Intelligence: Colonel Olrik...
Fleeing the devastation of World War III, Blake, Mortimer and Nasir have been trying to reach a secret base with the blueprints for a new weapon, the Swordfish. But the forces of the Yellow Empire are hot on their trail, and soon Mortimer is captured. While Blake works tirelessly at coordinating the various resistance movements on the planet, the professor is forced to endure captivity, threats and torture from their eternal enemy, Olrik.
Noah, Donald and Solorio, having rescued the rest of the children
kidnapped by the ruthless gold prospectors of the Palombian
rainforest, have escaped up the Boavista River, despite the rumours
of terrible danger in that region. One evening, frightened by, yet
drawn towards, demented laughter in the distance, they discover a
lost temple, and at its top, a mysterious light. Worried about them,
the Marsupilami soon joins them again - and not a moment too soon ...
The captain and the professor have finally made it to the secret base with the Swordfish blueprints, and construction has begun on the extraordinary machines. Olrik hasn't had his last word, though, and he is ready to take tremendous risks to locate the world's last bastion of resistance and freedom. A race against time is on between Imperial forces on one side and Mortimer's teams of engineers on the other... The fate of civilisation is at stake.
Deep under Sao Miguel island, rumoured to be the last emerging part of Atlantis, Professor Mortimer has discovered samples of a mysterious radioactive metal. Could it be the Atlanteans' legendary orichalcum? When he and his friend Blake set out on an expedition into the depths to find out, sabotage occurs in the form of their old opponent Olrik. And soon, all three will be embroiled in a power struggle far bigger in scope than they could have imagined.
Several months after their adventures in Antarctica, Blake and Mortimer are back in England. Still somewhat shaken after his ordeal, the professor is ordered by his doctor to get some rest. In typical Mortimer fashion, he decides to spend his holidays in Africa... looking for a lost civilisation! Accompanied by Nastasia Wardynska and an old flame of his, he begins tracking down a culture that is older than any ever recorded-but someone is dogging their every step...
Tasked by the queen to close the `Septimus Wave' case once and for
all, Captain Blake is facing a daunting task, for many questions
remain unanswered. Where did the spaceship buried beneath London come
from? What became of Lady Rowana and Professor Evangely? Meanwhile,
Mortimer is trying to pull Olrik out of the catatonic state the
villain has been in since his encounter with the ship's occupant. Has the threat to the nation truly been vanquished?
A necklace that used to belong to Marie Antoinette, the last French queen before the French Revolution, turns up in the hands of a British collector who decides to present it to Queen Elizabeth. Blake and Mortimer's sworn enemy Olrik, about to be tried in Paris, manages to escape and steals the precious piece of jewellery in front of their very noses during a glittering reception in the French capital. The affair threatens to turn into a full-blown diplomatic incident, especially since Olrik is doing his best to embarrass Blake and Mortimer by tipping off the press about his every move.
1919. Colonel Lawrence - Lawrence of Arabia - has an unpleasant meeting with an MI5 agent who confiscates his manuscript of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. 35 years later, Oxford is shaken by a series of burglaries at the Ashmolean Museum, at the same time as Blake learns of the death of an old friend. The captain begins an investigation, while Mortimer looks into the thefts... But what dark connection does all of this have with Lawrence or Blake's own past?
In the abandoned town, the children have established a new home and organised a life for themselves. As they prepare for a trip to other cities in an attempt to determine the extent of the phenomenon that saw everyone else vanish, they encounter and learn to deal with the problems of an existence without adults. Until one day a tall, knifewielding figure appears, and their dream of finding someone else suddenly turns into a nightmare...
World War Three is over. Basam Damdu has been defeated. England can breathe and begin the rebuilding process ... or so it thinks. In China, unfortunately, Mao's Communists keep bowling over Chiang Kai-shek's troops, and are threatening Hong Kong. And General Xi-Lee, a ruthless warlord, has dreams of becoming the new Qin Shi Huang - first Emperor of China. When a relic of that very emperor is discovered by an acquaintance of Mortimer, things take a turn for the worst ...
While on an expedition in Antarctica, the Count of Champignac makes an extraordinary discovery: a still-viable dinosaur egg! Having brought the precious find back to his castle, he invites a few colleagues over - along with Spirou and Fantasio - and sets about hatching the egg. But working towards scientific progress isn't easy when one is somewhat absent-minded ... and saddled with a whimsical Marsupilami `assistant'! Soon, life in the village of Champignac becomes rather complicated ...
Professor Mortimer is bequeathed an old house in France by a former adversary: Miloch, the evil genius of SOS Meteors fame. Along with the house is a letter inviting the Briton, as the only man of worthy intellect, to discover a fabulous invention left behind by the departed. Following recorded instructions, Mortimer activates the device ... and wakes up a hundred million years in the past! Thus begins an incredible odyssey through time...
In Venice, a boating accident leads to the discovery of a 400 year old text bearing the signature `W.S.' and promising the truth about the `Shakespeare mystery'. That very night, someone tries unsuccessfully to steal the precious document. The discoverer, Marquis Stefano Da Spiri, decides to send a copy of the document to a specialist of the Bard in London for stylistic authentication. As for the original, he entrusts it to an old comrade in arms from WW2: Captain Francis Blake...
Arriving back at Champignac after their resounding victory over Zorglub and his Zorglmen - poor souls enslaved by a terrible will-negating wave - Spirou, Fantasio and the count discover the entire village paralysed! Another potential use of the zorglwave, and a sign that Zorglub's remorse and his promise to free all of his men may not have been entirely sincere. Discovering the truth will take time, though, and send our friends on a trip far from home...
Spirou and Fantasio are famous - among other things, as the official
discoverers of that legendary creature, the Marsupilami, one of which
often accompanies them on their adventures. So when one of their
conferences is cancelled in favour of a documentary film from an
unknown author, they are understandably irritated... until, that is,
they realise the film is the very first to record the family life of wild Marsupilamis!
A plane carrying two Chinese government envoys goes down in the Palombian jungle. A crate is parachuted out just before the crash. It contains a baby panda, official gift of China to a neighbouring country. The young survivor is found and taken in by the Marsupilami's family, but they soon face a serious problem: their new charge only eats bamboo - the only local source of which lies inside the nearby native village...
A Soviet rocket falls back to Earth carrying deadly bacteria. KGB Professor Voronov turns the extraterrestrial threat into a terrifying weapon that could be used to devastate the Western world-but he doesn't take into account the vigilance of Her Majesty's intelligence services. Soon, Blake and Mortimer are drawn into a lethal, shadowy war, from Moscow to London, where the stakes are no less than international peace and the real enemy may not be so obvious.
Extreme weather threatens the whole of continental Europe, turning the lives of its citizens inside out. The French government calls Professor Mortimer to help solve this enigma. Mortimer travels near Paris to visit his friend Professor Labrousse, the chief French meteorologist. But when the taxi driver Labrousse sent to meet Mortimer at the station disappears, our friend becomes the prime suspect. Mortimer gets in touch with his old friend Blake, also in France, to help him out of this tricky situation.
However, Blake disappears as well, so Mortimer and Labrousse have two missing-person cases to investigate. They soon discover that the two disappearances are not only linked to each other, but also to the climatic catastrophes.
