THE LAST KINGDOM
by Steve Berry
Will mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria wreak havoc on the new world order from beyond his 137-year-old grave? Not if Cotton Malone has anything to say about it.
Malone, who retired from the Magellan Billet of the U.S. intelligence service after 12 years to open a bookstore in Copenhagen, still takes the odd freelance job with the CIA, and this one is a doozy. Derrick Koger, CIA chief of special operations, wants to recover a missing book and a document Ludwig set great store by. So do a number of other players: Prince Stefan von Bayern and his brother, Albert Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria, relatives who might plausibly claim to be the materials’ rightful owners; Marc Fenn, grand master of the Guglmänner (think secessionist KKK Bavarians); ex–CIA killer Jason Rife, founder of a fearsome organization called the Scythe; and inevitably the consulate general of China. Readers agile enough to pick their way through the historical tidbits and action sequences veteran Berry crams into every chapter will eventually discover, along with Malone, that Ludwig had his eye on a prime piece of real estate well outside his borders that’s become exponentially more valuable for the raw materials an extended this-much-is-true endnote observes are actually there. Ad hoc alliances are forged and broken, double crosses drive up the body count, inventive, overcaffeinated set pieces are teed up at a breakneck pace, and two different secret codes will keep puzzle solvers busy as Malone does his level best to disprove his own hard-won wisdom: “Hotshots never survived long.”
About what you’d expect if James Bond were an American who consulted with the CIA. Bring it on.