The Malta Exchange

by Steve Berry
401 pgs  (Cotton Malone series #14)

The Malta Exchange begins with Cotton Malone arriving in Italy, on a special assignment from MI6 to track down letters between Winston Churchill and Mussolini, rumored to have been exchanged during the early stages of World War II. These letters are believed to reveal embarrassing information outlining a deal Churchill tried to make with the Italian dictator, which would have kept Italy from entering the war. But this is a Steve Berry book, so things are never as easy for Cotton as they could be, and he soon finds himself being shot at and attacked by a bear.

The trail to the letters leads Malone to Cardinal Gallo, who has his sights set on becoming the next Pope. But Gallo, whose ascendancy to power within the Catholic Church has been the result of plots, blackmail, and murder, is a man driven by power and control, instead of faith and devotion to his religion.

Berry's love for history is fully displayed in The Malta Exchange, and it was those elements of the story that kept me interested and turning the pages. There are long passages focused on Constantine and the origins of the Catholic Church that I found to be the most entertaining parts of the story. Unfortunately, the plot itself was a little tiresome and the action wasn't up to what I've come to expect from Berry. Hopefully he returns to form with The Warsaw Protocol next year.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Bishop's Pawn

by Steve Berry
340 pgs  (Cotton Malone series #13)

On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray initially plead guilty to killing King in order to avoid the possibility of the death penalty, but later recantd his confession. He was never granted a retrial. In The Bishop's Pawn, Steve Berry's 13th book featuring Cotton Malone, the former Justice Department operative, Berry goes back in time and tells a story that originated with Cotton's first assignment with the department.

When Cotton was first recruited by Stephanie Nelle, he was sent to recover the most valuable coin ever produced, located in a shipwreck somewhere off the coast of south Florida. Along with the Coin Cotton salvaged a file that contained information concerning J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI's involvement in Dr. King's death.

From that point forward Berry does what he does best and incorporates historical facts with fiction and tells a story that, if true, would rewrite the history books. Berry is very adept at telling a fascinating story that carefully leads his readers down a path to the conclusion he has waiting them. Every step along that path is plausible and convincing and make perfect sense in the context in which they're presented. And by the end, it's hard to argue with the likelihood that history occurred the way Berry tells it.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Lost Order

by Steve Berry
493 pgs  (Cotton Malone series #12)

In Cotton Malone’s newest adventure, Steve Berry places him on the hunt to find billions of dollars in hidden gold coins. It’s rumored that an organization known as the Knights of the Golden Circle worked behind the scenes in the years prior to the Civil War to try to establish a separate country, amassing vast reserves of gold coins through bank and train robberies during the process. When the Civil War ended, with the country remaining intact, the vast reserves of gold disappeared.

As Cotton begins searching for the gold and learning of its history, he quickly learns that the Knights of the Golden Circle are still active. Sentinels have been watching over the gold and the clues to its whereabouts since the 19^th century, and they’re willing to go to great lengths to protect it.

But that’s not the only thing the organization has been involved in. There’s a faction of the group that is actively working to bring about a radical change in the way the federal government operates. A change, that if successfully brought about, will dramatically shift the balance of power at the highest levels. It’s Cotton Malone’s friend and former POTUS, Danny Daniels, who becomes aware of their plans and must try to stop them.

The Lost Order is one of the better books in the Cotton Malone series, as of late. Like the other books, Berry takes a fascinating and obscure part of history, places it at the core of his story, and then writes a compelling thriller around it. But this time around, he also takes a deeper dive into Cotton’s background. That, along with the resurgent role of Danny Daniels, made the book a little more interesting.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The 14th Colony

by Steve Berry
450 pgs  (Cotton Malone series #11)

Steve Berry has repeatedly demonstrated his unique knack for finding obscure and seemingly inconsequential aspects of our country's history, and then letting it come to light in modern times with potentially world-changing consequences. In this latest installment he shines a light on the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the surprising flaw it contains.

As the book begins, President Daniel's presidency is days away from ending and his successor is preparing to begin his. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution calls for the exiting President and Vice-President's terms to end at precisely noon on January 20th following the election. Usually the President and Vice-president-elect take their oaths of office within a few minutes of that time. But what happens if both were to die during that short window of time? Who would become the rightful President? It's not as clearly laid out as most would expect.

Aleksandr Zorin is an ex-KGB officer with a personal vendetta against the United States. He's gained access to a small nuclear bomb left over from the Cold War, and if he's not stopped in time, he'll use that bomb to cause a level of chaos in the United States that has never been experienced before. Of course it's up to Cotton Malone and the usual cast of supporting characters to make sure that doesn't happen.

Berry's books are always fun and entertaining. This one was a little heavy on the history, and a little too light on the excitement and and fun that I've come to expect from the Malone series. But overall, it's an enjoyable book and worth the read.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Patriot Threat

by Steve Berry
386 pgs  (Cotton Malone Series #10)

You can almost set your calendar with the annual release of a book by Steve Berry. Every once in awhile that book is a stand-alone story, but the majority of the time, it's a new book featuring Cotton Malone, a former operative of the Department of Justice's Magellan Billet. The Patriot Threat is the tenth in that series.

The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to levy an income tax. Undoubtedly it is the least popular of all the amendments, and each and every one of us would love to see it disappear. But what if it could be proven that the ratification of the 16th Amendment was invalid and that every penny of income tax ever collected by the government was done so illegally?

Most would agree that eliminating the income tax would be a tremendous boon to the budget of every citizen of this country. But what would happen to the country's economy--to say nothing of the global economy, if the country was suddenly faced with the elimination of 90% of the money used to run it and make the monthly payments on all its debts?

There have long been rumors that evidence of the amendment's invalidity exists, and when the head of the Magellan Billet learns that that evidence may have fallen into the hands of a rogue North Korean, she enlists the help once again of Cotton. Cotton's investigation leads him on a fast-paced race from Venice to Croatia.

Berry is nothing if not reliable as an author. You know what you're going to get when you pick up one of his books. It always involves an obscure element of history set in the middle of an exciting and fun thriller. I always enjoy reading his books, both the Cotton Malone series as well as the occasional stand-alone.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Lincoln Myth

by Steve Berry
429 pgs  (Cotton Malone series #9)

When I learned that Steve Berry's newest book was going to involve the Mormons, and a secret pact that was formed between Brigham Young and Abraham Lincoln, I had high hopes. As a member of the LDS/Mormon church, I was hoping that Berry would get things right when it came to the church and its history. I was hoping he would be respectful when it came to the beliefs of the church. I was hoping the story would be intriguing and entertaining. And most of all, I was hoping that a high-ranking member of the church would be the story's villain.

Berry delivered on every hope I had.

Shortly following the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, its framers drafted another now-forgotten document; one that was intended to help ensure ratification of the Constitution at the time, but one that if known about during Abraham Lincoln's presidency, would have ensured the South's legal right to secede and torn the nation apart. Lincoln, faced with the real possibility that the country was going to split apart during his presidency, reached out to Brigham Young, who years earlier had led the Mormon exodus from Illinois to the Utah territory, and loaned him that potentially volatile historical document for safekeeping. In return for safeguarding that document, Lincoln promised to leave the Mormons alone and allow Brigham Young to govern the Utah territory as he saw fit. A promise that he fulfilled.

Almost 150 years later, that same document, rumored to still be in the possession of the LDS church, is once again at the center of a battle that could tear the nation part. Thaddeus Rowan, a high-ranking U.S. senator from Utah as well as one of the Church's 12 apostles, is on a mission to find where Brigham Young hid the document, and use it to tear the nation apart. It's up to Cotton Malone to ensure that that doesn't happen.

I usually give Berry's books 3 stars. They're always entertaining and well-written, but they're not spectacular. This one gets an extra star because of the LDS Church involvement in the story.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The King's Deception

by Steve Berry
409 pgs  (Cotton Malone series #8)

I always buy Steve Berry's books as soon as they come out, but I rarely read them right away. It's not that I don't enjoy them--I've enjoyed all of them. They're always entertaining and they involve some sort of little-known historical mystery or deception that Malone ends up getting dragged into at the risk of his life. Unfortunately, they're all fairly formulaic and so I don't find myself getting overly excited to read them. Instead, I get around to them when I feel like it.

This time around Malone finds himself enlisted by the CIA to investigate an historical mystery concerning Queen Elizabeth I. The CIA wants to blackmail the British government into stopping Scotland from releasing a Libyan terrorist who decades ago bombed a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie. The man is in the final stages of terminal cancer and is being released as a show of humanitarianism. The CIA is determined to prevent his release and only sees one way to do it--they need to prove that the reason the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty became known as "The Virgin Queen," was because she was secretly a man.

I know how it sounds. I laughed out loud when the theory was first presented in the book. But to Berry's credit, he's a master researcher, and does an excellent job of converting his readers to the idea before he finishes. I don't know that I'll ever be able to look at a portrait of her/him again without considering the idea.

In his usual fashion, Berry combines historical locales and mysteries with fairly fast-paced action and in the end produces a book that is entertaining, but expected. I'm hoping that he mixes things up a little soon. Maybe he could kill off a vital character (his son Gary?) and send Malone into a rage-induced revenge crusade or something; anything to add a little unpredictability to the series and keep me on my toes.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Columbus Affair

The Columbus Affair by Steve Berry

It's been awhile since The Third Secret was published, which was the last book by Steve Berry that didn't feature Cotton Malone. As much as I enjoy that series, The Columbus Affair was a welcome break. In this book, Berry uses a little-known hypothesis about Christopher Columbus, and the true impetus behind his famous first voyage, as the backdrop for an entertaining thriller.

Tom Sagan is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist whose career and life are now in ruin. So much so, that when he makes his first appearance in the book, he has a gun to his head and is moments away from putting an end to his misery. He's stopped from pulling the trigger by a tapping on his window. The man standing outside his house, is holding a picture of Tom's daughter, tied up and at the mercy of kidnappers. The kidnappers need Tom to do something that only he can accomplish, order the exumation of his father's body. They believe he was burried with a secret, literally.

That secret ties in with the hypothesis that Christopher Columbus was a converted Jew whose 1492 voyage was an attempt to secure a new homeland for those of his adopted faith, somewhere in eastern Asia. Fortunately for me, I was able to attend one of the stops on Berry's media tour for this book and had the chance to listen to him explain his research into this idea. It really was fascinating and it also occured the same week that several cable news stations ran reports exploring the same hypothesis. Berry excels in this book at weaving historical facts along with long-standing rumors about the enigmatic explorer to tell a captivating story.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Jefferson Key

The Jefferson Key by Steve Berry
(Cotton Malone series #7)

The Jefferson Key is another solid offering by Steve Berry featuring his recurring character Cotton Malone, the ex-operative for the Justice Department who can't seem to stay retired.

When the founding fathers drafted the U.S. Constitution, they included a little-known clause that has never been amended. The clause exempted those who used piracy or privateering to protect the interests of this country from criminal prosecution. Ever since the Revolutionary War, a group of pirates known as the Commonwealth has existed - operating with total immunity from the law as long as their actions served the interests of the country, and they paid a percentage of their profits to the U.S. Treasury.

Four former Presidents tried to stand up to the Commonwealth and change their constitutional loophole -  Garfield, McKinley, Lincoln, and Kennedy, and they all met with similar fates. Only one, Andrew Jackson, who survived an assassination attempt, was able to stand up to the Commonwealth and put into motion a plan that might eventually take them down.

Now, after the Commonwealth's attempted assassination of President Daniels, Cotton Malone and Cassiopia Vitt are enlisted to finish what Jackson began long ago. But to do so, they have to crack an undecipherable code that was created back when Thomas Jefferson was the President.

The Jefferson Key is good. It's exactly what I expect when I read one of Berry's books. It's got a high level of action and Berry does a good job keeping you on your toes. The plot twists are a little predictable, having read all of his other books, but his books are still fun and worthwhile reads.


★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Emperor's Tomb

The Emperor's Tomb by Steve Berry
(Cotton Malone series #6)

Cotton Malone is back in Berry's 6th installment featuring the former operative for the Justice Department. Once again he is dragged back into the world he was trying to leave behind when he retired and opened up an antiquarian book store in Amsterdam.

This disruption to his life begins when an anonymous note is delivered to him that contains a web address. When he goes to the website he finds that it's a live feed showing the frequent associate in his adventures, Cassiopeia Vitt, bound and being tortured. The man torturing Cassiopeia instructs Cotton to bring him the artifact Cassiopeia entrusted to him and the feed ends. Cotton has no idea what the man is referring to but knows that Cassiopeia's life depends on him figuring out what's going on and rescuing her.

Cotton's efforts take him to China, where in internal power struggle is taking place between two men vying to become the country's next premier. They're each trying to obtain possession of a sample of oil that was obtained over two thousand years ago. This oil may provide the country with the ability to end its dependence on foreign oil and ultimately solidify the country's role on the world stage.

I enjoyed The Emperor's Tomb. It was neither better nor worse than Berry's other books. I would like to see him write some more stand-alone books to break things up a bit. But his books are always fun reads and worth the time.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆