1. The book starts with a historical background which provides the reason for all the chasing in the story.
2. The good guy is a lawyer whose job does not involve litigation in courts.
3. This good guy stumbles upon a problem/issue/cause which takes him to several countries to resolve the problem/solve the mystery/find a long-lost object or person.
4. He gets chased, shot at, and punched around a lot.
5. He finds other good guys to help him out.
6. There are no surprises. We know who the bad guys are and that they don’t have qualms eliminating people to achieve their ends.
7. The good guys win in the end.
The book opens with a scene from the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria on 10 April 1945. One of the Russian prisoners there, Karol Borya, came upon information concerning the Amber Room. Borya was a member of Russia’s Extraordinary State Commission established in 1942 to resolve problems associated with the Nazi occupation.
The Amber Room, finished in 1770, consisted of 86 square meters of amber-finished walls “dotted with fanciful figurines, floral garlands, tulips, roses, seashells, monograms, and rocaille, all in glittering shades of brown, red, yellow, and orange. Each panel was framed in a cartouche of boiserie, Louis Quinze style, separating them vertically by pairs of narrow mirrored pilasters adorned with bronze candelabra, everything gilded to blend with the amber. The centers of the four panels were dotted with exquisite Florentine mosaics fashioned from polished jasper and agate and framed in gilded bronze. A ceiling mural was added, along with an intricate parquet floor of inlaid oak, maple, sandalwood, rosewood, walnut, and mahogany.” It was so magnificent that the Amber Room was said to be the 8th wonder of the world.
These panels were dismantled and shipped from Russia to Germany in 1941, Germany believing to be the rightful owners of the panels. The tides turned in 1944 and with the approaching Soviet Army, the Germans dismantled and placed the panels in crates. The amber panels were last seen on 6 April 1945 when trucks left Konigsberg.
Borya somehow managed to survive and he eventually moved to the US where he took up the name of Karl Bates. He had a daughter, Rachel, who became a judge at the Fulton County. Rachel was married to Paul Cutler, a probate attorney at Pridgen & Woodworth’s (same law firm where Miles Lord came from [The Romanov Prophecy] but there’s no mention of this in either book.)
The Cutlers would soon find out that Borya, who they thought died of natural causes, was murdered by one of the Acquisitors of a secret organization called the Retrievers of Lost Antiquities. The club was composed of nine men, all extremely wealthy, and vying against each other who could locate a piece of art faster. For two of the club’s members, Ernst Loring and Franz Fellner, the race was on for the Amber Room. Loring and Fellner had the best Acquisitors - Suzanne Danzer and Christian Knoll, both ambitious, ruthless, skilled, extremely intelligent, and highly educated.
The Cutlers, together with their newfound ally Herr McKoy, after being chased by Danzer and Knoll in the US and then Germany, would bravely confront Loring heads on.
At the end of the day, the Cutlers found the amber panels and were able to have these reinstated at the Catherine Palace. It was not too surprising either where they found the long-lost panels. And of course, the Cutlers lived happily ever after.
The joy in reading Steve Berry does not come from the eureka of solving a mystery but the thrill of the ride itself. The Amber Room is no exception.
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