The Paris Vendetta by Steve Berry (2009)

I’ve got to hand it to Steve Berry. Just when I had his formula for his books down pat, he comes up with something totally unexpected in The Paris Vendetta.

Granted, the usual elements are there: (1) a search for a lost treasure (Napoleon Bonaparte’s cache of wealth which he purportedly hid for his son); (2) a group of greedy wealthy financiers with little qualms as to the consequences of their actions (The Paris Club); (3) a highly skilled agent who executes a series of dastardly acts for said group of financiers (Peter Lyon, an international terrorist); (4) the US Government not far behind (once again, Stephanie Nelle of the US Justice Department is assigned to monitor the conspiracy; (5) Cotton Malone, retired agent of the US Justice Department turned Copenhagen bookseller, finds himself in the middle of the search for a lost treasure and battling wits with the wealthy financiers and their hired gun; and (6) friends who come to Malone’s aid (Sam Collins, a dismissed American Secret Service Agent and Meagan Morrison, publisher of a website known for financial conspiracies). Berry however, manages in this book to show that he is capable of springing a surprise.

There’s one thing I appreciate with Steve Berry’s books which I’ve failed to mention in my previous reviews. At the end of each of his books, Berry explains the research he’s done on his opus and separates fact from fiction. If there’s one thing which annoys me no end, it is people who swallow hook, line, and sinker, the (tall) tale that’s been sprung on them and go around telling whomsoever cares to listen that such and such thing has indeed happened.

The Paris Vendetta also showed a good point of Berry: He knows where to tread lightly. Berry, in this book where he tackled financial conspiracies, chose to discuss the same through Sam Collins and Meagan Morrison, who he painted as earnest young guns but may be a bit addled in the head. So if any economist or financial analyst points out the absurdity of some of the points raised in The Paris Vendetta, Berry can easily say, “Hey, don’t point that finger at me; that was Collin/Morrison speaking.”

I have a feeling The Paris Vendetta won’t be the last Steve Berry book I’ll be reading. Not because of superb writing or extraordinary plots but because of the guy’s ability to give his readers a pleasant enough diversion from the everyday vagaries of living.

The Venetian Betrayal by Steve Berry (2007)

This time, it is Cassiopeia Vitt who is messed up and who does not want Cotton Malone’s help. Of course, this would not be a Steve Berry book if Malone remained a bystander.

The Venetian Betrayal is an exhilarating story of the search for the tomb of Alexander the Great; a despot’s dream to conquer Asia and the Middle East with the use of biological weapons; an American’s grandiose plan to bring to the international market the solution to the HIV virus; the US meddling in the affairs of Central Asia; and the discovery of a person dear to Henrik Thorvaldsen and Cassiopeia Vitt. The Venetian Betrayal also bears witness to the blossoming of (much!) friendlier relations between Vitt and Malone (uh oh…. Berry is getting sappy…)

This is my 6th Steve Berry book and I cannot be sure if I am honestly enthralled with Malone’s adventures or my captivation at the moment is due to the hormonal changes brought about by this little pebble I am carrying due in seven weeks. I remember when I was reviewing for the bar exam, how I was transfixed every 6pm with a certain Spanish soap opera which I found absolutely unendurable after I completed the four-Sunday bar exams.

Guess I’ll know after seven weeks if I still find Berry’s predictable plots and mishmash of history and futuristic what-ifs as mesmerizing as I find them today while my little one is doing cartwheels in my tummy. That’s not too long now.

The Charlemagne Pursuit by Steve Berry (2008)

Cotton Malone’s retirement from the US Justice Department, a job where he was chased and shot at a lot, has so far been unsuccessful.

In The Templar Legacy, he was forced out of his peaceful existence as a bookseller in Copenhagen when his ex-boss Stephanie Nelle got into trouble. Next, his son Gary, in The Alexandria Link, was kidnapped. Now in the Charlemagne Pursuit, he finds out that his father, Forrest Malone, who he thought died in a submarine accident in the North Atlantic, was actually aboard a secret nuclear vessel lost on a highly classified mission beneath the ice shelves of Antarctica.

Steve Berry manages to weave a complex plot in this book. Parallel with Cotton Malone’s adventure with the wealthy (and shapely!) blonde twin sisters Dorothea Lindauer and Christl Falk in search of the missing nuclear vessel, Stephanie Nelle has her hands full contending with the US President, the two Deputy National Security Advisers Edwin Davis and Diane McKoy, and the ambitious naval commanding officer Admiral Langford Ramsey.

The Charlemagne Pursuit has the characters being “played” against one another. This is perhaps Berry’s determined effort to keep an element of suspense throughout the book unlike in his previous works where he laid all his cards on the table all at once.

Berry has enjoyed himself so much in this episode with Cotton Malone that he has indulged him with an affair with one of the twins. He has also made his usual bad/executioner guy not so elegant this time. Charlie Smith is a far cry from the suave Christian Knoll in The Amber Room but has more in common with the Russian police bad guys in The Romanov Prophecy.

Berry is definitely on a roll in this book. He has managed to seamlessly interconnect the stories from the time of Charlemagne, to Hitler’s predisposition for the Aryan race, and the US’s top secret mission to Antarctica culminating in Cotton Malone’s finding the body of his father frozen in time and the lost city somewhere in Antarctica which Charlemagne, the Nazis, and the Americans have been long looking for.

The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry (2007)

Harold Earl Malone, a.k.a. Cotton Malone is back!

In The Templar Legacy, it was Stephanie Nelle, Malone’s former boss at the Justice Department, who needed help in solving the puzzle of her dead son and husband. In The Alexandria Link, Malone needs Nelle’s help this time when his 16-year old son Gary is kidnapped.

Two of Malone’s pals from The Templar Legacy also show up to lend their assistance - Henrik Thorvaldsen, a rich, eccentric Danish and Cassiopeia Vitt, a wealthy, intelligent, highly skilled female Moorish engineer whose specialty is Middle Ages architecture.

Malone this time is up against the Der Orden des Goldenene Vliesses (The Order of the Golden Fleece) a European economic cartel composed of 71 members governed by a Circle of five Chairs. The Blue Chair, who is elected for life, heads both the Order and the Circle. The Blue Chair is presently the billionaire Alfred Hermann, owner of European steel factories, African mines, Far Eastern rubber plantations, and banking concerns worldwide. Malone is also up against some powerful people in the White House.

The Order has tasked Dominic Sabre, known as die Klauen der Adler (the Talons of the Eagle), to use Gary as bait so that Malone can be led to reveal the whereabouts of George Haddad, a Palestinian biblical scholar, referred to as the Alexandrian Link. It is believed that the Alexandrian Link has been able to find out the location of the lost library of Alexandria which had the greatest concentration of knowledge on the planet and which stood for 600 years until the middle of the 7th century when the Muslims finally took control of Alexandria and purged everything contrary to Islam. Copies of half a million scrolls, codices, maps, were purportedly stored in the library of Alexandria.

Berry has definitely improved in the Alexandrian Link. He was able now to build a semblance of suspense and almost right to the end, has managed to keep readers guessing who between O. Brent Green, US Attorney General and Larry Daley, Deputy National Security Adviser, was in cahoots with the US Vice President in the plot to assassinate the US President while on a trip to Afghanistan. He also did a clever trick with the disappearance of the Alexandrian Link.

We also get to meet in Alexandrian Link, Pam Malone, Cotton’s ex-wife lawyer (she has decided to keep the name Malone after the divorce so she shares the same name as her son). We sympathize with Mrs. Malone here a bit. While Cotton has repeatedly berated the shortcomings of his ex-wife, it has come up in the search for the lost library of Alexandria that Cotton has not been only an absentee husband and father but has had affairs in the past which led to the breakdown of the marriage. At least Berry has given the poor woman a break in this book.

The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry (2006)

Steve Berry’s Templar Legacy reprises the romantic notion that the Knights Templar, found in AD 1118, possesses knowledge that can shake the very foundations of Christendom and that the organization has survived to present date.

Berry pushes the envelope further. He posits in the book that when the Knights Templar’s head Jacques de Molay was burned at the stake in Paris in 1314, the secrets of the organization died with him.

The newly-elected master of the Knights Templar, Raymond De Roquefort, believes that he is very near to finding the Knights Templar’s lost knowledge and once he finds it, he would be able to restore the Order to its former glory.

De Roquefort, however, has failed to take into consideration that his immediate predecessor knew that De Roquefort would wrest the Knights Templar’s leadership from the seneschal and has placed into motion an elaborate plan as soon as De Roquefort took over the Order. De Roquefort also failed to contend that Stephanie Nelle, widow of Lars Nelle and head of the Magellan Billet of the Justice Department, would be as tough as nails. (Lars Nelle was believed to have solved the mystery of the missing knowledge of the Knights Templar.) Moreover, De Roquefort could not have foreseen that the book’s hero, Cotton Malone, a retired lawyer of the Justice Department, would step out of his hibernation and come to the assistance of Stephanie Nelle, whom he has worked under for several years.

The quest for the Knights Templar’s missing knowledge (and lost fabulous wealth!) brought the concerned parties zooming across Copenhagen and then to France.

The Templar Legacy follows Steve Berry’s formula that after much chasing and exchange of firepower, the good guys find what they’re looking for. What’s just deflating about this book is that Berry, after trying to build a crescendo, rapidly brings the book to a conclusion. The reader goes, “Whaaat? What was that all?” The clues are too obvious, the missing knowledge and treasure too easy to find, and the bad guys too brazen and stupid. One wonders why it took eight centuries to solve the puzzle.

I am definitely giving the points to Dan Brown for telling a better story about the Knights Templar in his “The Da Vinci Code.”

The Amber Room by Steve Berry (2003)

This is the third of Steve Berry’s book I’ve read this month and it’s easy to see the formula he follows:

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.

The Romanov Prophecy by Steve Berry (2004)

 Russia’s Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children were murdered in Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918.  The remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed in July 1991.  Two of the bodies of the imperial children, however, were not found in the mass grave.

Berry’s the Romanov Prophecy sits on the premise that the Crown Prince Alexei and the Princess Anastasia may have somehow managed to escape.

Enter Miles Lord, a lawyer of Pridgen & Woodworth’s International Division, whose  assignment is to support the claim of Stefan Baklanov’s claim to the Russian throne.  Russia, tired of its political experiments, is now ready to give monarchy another chance.

Baklanov, a Romanov by birth, is the leading contender for selection by the Tsarist Commission.  Since Baklanov is heavily entrenched with Western businesses, many of which are Pridgen & Woodworth’s clients, the law firm sent Lord to make sure that there is nothing that could impugn Baklanov’s claim.

A series of attempts against Lord’s life, old documents, and Rasputin’s prophecy, however, has led Lord to believe that there is something that could severely threaten Baklanov’s chance at the Russian throne: two of the imperial children have survived and that their progeny are out there biding their time.

Romanov Prophecy is a fast-past paced, heart-pumping book hard to put down. Be ready to suspend disbelief that Russia wants to revert to monarchy and that Rasputin was anything but a charlatan. 

Romanov Prophecy is highly recommended reading for long layovers at airports.

POSTSCRIPT:  Caty Petersen, a Filipina, recently brought forth a claim that her grandmother was the Princess Anastasia.  According to Petersen, her grandmother arrived by boat in the Philippines and stayed for a time with an orphanage before marrying her grandfather. The problem with this claim is that a DNA testing in 2007 showed that the remains of two children found in a separate grave about 70 meters away from the mass grave of the Romanovs rendered irrefutable that these were the two children who for a long time were thought to have escaped.