The Charlemagne Pursuit: A Novel (Cotton Malone Book 4) Kindle Edition

Cotton Malone ventures out on his next adventure, this one is personal He gets tangled up into some family drama that is not his own, but does tie in with his own agenda. I really appreciated that we brought the focus back to Cotton Malone because I was missing that in the previous entry. Steve Berry does give us a little more insight into a few of the characters we have been running with alongside Cotton. I also really enjoyed how this story was a lot more focused because again, I felt like the previous entry was a little scattered at times. All around this was another solid entry in the Cotton Malone series, but this ended with a cliffhanger, so I had to dive into book five.

I am a great Steve Berry and Cotton Malone fan. Mr Berry's books are well written, packed with historical facts, characters you can easily interact with and a well thought out plot that alwayscomes together soundly at the end. I have to admit missing his two friends, Henrick and Ms Vitt and at first I thought the book would not be the same without them. However, as I read further I realised Cotton was on his own quest to find the truth behind the death of his father, submariner Forrest Malone. There are two plots running parallel, one involving Cotton's quest to solve his Dad's death in the Antarctic 38 years ago and the other Edwin Davis of the White House, with the help of Stephanie Nelle, Director of the Magellan Billet, set on revenge for the long ago murder of his secret love which was ordered by the now extremely ambitious Head of Naval Intelligence who intends to kill his way to the Oval Office. President Danny Daniels is once again supporting both of these endeavors which ultimately intertwine and give results that satisfy Cotton, Edwin, Stephanie and of course last but not least the President and the overall security of the United States of America. While some say it's not necessary to read the series in order, I disagree. As the series progresses it is invaluable to know the background history between the main characters to understand where the later books fit in. I understand Cotton would love to stay in retirement and no longer have to chase around the world solving intriguing cases and getting shot at but I'm sure he'd get very board tending his bookshop in Denmark and I hope Mr Malone has a few more escapades with his group of friends instore for us. I thoroughly recommend Steve Berry as a 'must read' author, whether it be the Malone Series or his stand alone novels, he makes you think about what you are reading, certainly not chewing gum for the mind !

One of my favorite authors.

Great historical fiction. Steve Perry does this type of writing well!. This book kept me turning Page after page after page.

I've read a few other Berry thrillers (THE AMBER ROOM, THE ROMANOV PROPHECY), mainly to satisfy my Romanov jones. Berry usually does a pretty good job making the historical distortions palatable. That's not the case with THE CHARLEMAGNE PURSUIT. I wanted to know more about Charlemagne, but this is more about some crazy Nazi scheme to prove their Aryan ancestry.The book is in trouble right off the bat in that there are too many characters, and each of them is given his/her own viewpoint. There's a villainous admiral who wants to be vice president who will stop at nothing to get there, including murdering people. There are three or four secret agents, some of whom work for the admiral. There are two crazy German sisters who hate each other and their mother who is even crazier. There is a professional hit man with more lives than a cat. The list goes on and on. Suffice it to say the bodies pile up like cord wood.The Charlemagne reference has to do with a couple of books that the two German sisters own, one supposedly found in Charlemagne's grave. One of the books is in Latin, the other in some unintelligible language that the sisters and Cotton Malone, the main character, try to translate. It supposedly has to do with an advanced civilization that existed well before the Egyptians. And get this, it was supposed to be located beneath the ice cap in Antarctica.Berry must have had a problem with some of this stuff himself because he includes a "writer's note" at the end, trying to fill some of the holes. For instance, there really is a NR-1 submarine; there really were two covert operations called Highjump and Windmill. There really is a Piri Reis map with advanced navigational references that existed before longitude and latitude and the prime meridian were agreed upon. He also takes a mild swing at science which denied the existence of continental drift; this is supposed to prove that there could have been an advanced civilization before the Egyptians.What finally got me was the complete lack of motivation for the hatred of the two sisters. Was it supposed to have something to do with impressing their mother, or were they just crazy? The most likely explanation is that Berry needed them to behave that way, and that's author intrusion, a big no no.

The Charlemagne PursuitThe fourth Cotton Malone adventure from Steve Berry. What is interesting here are the changes Berry makes to the content with two main supporting characters from the first three books conspicuous by their absence. Deliberate ploy to freshen things up I do not know but the characters that were included more than made up for the original two’s absence.In 1971 a top-secret US submarines disappears in the Antarctic. Nobody survives and the US government does not search for the submarine. Instead they report the submarines disappearance as having taken place in the Atlantic and set up an investigation into that happening. The findings are then classified and hidden away from public gaze. The father of Cotton Malone was commander of the submarine.Almost forty years later Cotton manages to get access to the investigation paperwork and immediately all hell breaks loose. Individuals within the US navy want the report back under lock and key and are willing to kill in order to achieve it. However not all US personnel see it the same way and see this as an opportunity to shed light on a mystery that has remained unsolved for many years.When you also include a German family with a historical link to the Nazis who will do anything to find out what happened to the submarine you have a fast paced action thriller that in my view does not disappoint. All parties in the quest soon realise that it is not just the events of the last forty years that are paramount. Could the submarine have been following clues from a learned advisor of medieval Frankish king Charlemagne? Was the submarine in Antarctica because it was looking for something?Berry knows how to tell a story well. Weaving together a mixture of fact and fiction he creates an excellent storyline that grips the reader. An interesting point is that at the back of the book is a Writers Note section where he separates fact and fiction. The amount that is factually correct is by far the majority of the tale.An excellent read.

I haven't finished this book yet, but once again Steve Berry with Cotton Malone has produced another very good read, and I'm looking forward to buying another in the series very soon.

Love Steve Berry, one of my top five authors - I have been catching up on Cotton Malone and this was the best way of reading it although I enjoy the physical touch of a book, it just had to be the kindle this time! Usual brilliant story telling

Not disappointed, another spellbinding story, which you need to read until the final page. looking forward to the next book.

Quick delivery & as described, thank you