The Last Order by Steve Berry
Steve Berry has written 16 novels in the action/adventure/historical/thriller genre, of which the Library holds all. The Lost Order is the latest in the series of 12 novels featuring Cotton Malone of the US Justice Department’s Magellan Billet, a covert spy section. All of the novels commence with a chapter setting the scene of lost treasure or secret, something which will endanger the USA or the world if the evil doers get to it first. Cotton and his colleagues are lawyers by education, spies by training, sent to investigate and apprehend. In the later books, Cotton has retired from the Magellan Billet and moved to Copenhagen to own and run a rare bookshop. However, spies and their enemies and secrets never quite retire and Cotton has found that good bookshops need external funds to keep operating, so he is available for short term contracts to the Billet.
In the past few novels, Steve Berry has set the main plot around a lost secret involving the USA’s Founding Fathers, the Constitution, the Presidency or America’s involvement in international politics during the world wars. Notwithstanding this patriotic bent by the American author, the novels are all action packed thrillers which satisfy his readers. Character development is quite satisfactory, enough to carry forward through twelve books to date. I have read that the author and his wife travel extensively to research the cities and countries in which his novels are set. Their thorough research is evident as background descriptions of such activities such as the length of time it takes to run from one Smithsonian building to another feels entirely accurate.
Recommended for those who also read Clive Cussler, Dan Brown and Preston Child.
Find The Last Order by Steve Berry in the SMSA Library Catalogue
Belinda Coombs
Member of the SMSA Mystery & Crime Reading Group
