In my last post, I mentioned the "Cotton Malone" series of thriller-with-a-dash-of-history novels of Steve Berry. The first three in the series offered enough interesting history to keep me going through two more; The Charlemagne Pursuit and The Paris Vendetta. The first of those lacked much historical interest, focusing instead on a pseudo-history tale of a lost civilization and its city under the ice in Antarctica.
The Paris Vendetta was better, despite being a not-so-creative tale of a fabulous lost treasure. Also, lost treasure is a more plausible motivation for all the murder and mayhem than anything in the plots of the first four books in the series. This time, the lost hoard belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte and some bits of interesting Napoleonic history got salted into the mash of cryptic clues and perilous situations.
Unfortunately, Mr. Berry's writing (and his editors' editing) have failed to improve. It's time to leave Cotton Malone and return to authors familiar with the English language.
