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THE CHARLEMAGNE PURSUIT
by Steve Berry
Ballantine, December 2008
528 pages
$26.00
ISBN: 0345485793


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Cotton Malone, former Justice Department agent and current bookseller in Copenhagen, has always wondered about his father, a naval officer who went missing along with the entire crew of his submarine when Cotton was a young boy. The Navy would never release the details of what happened to these men. Now Malone calls in a favor from his old boss, Stephanie Nelle, to get the classified documents. But as soon as he has the documents he is attacked by two men and a woman. This begins a strange saga which will lead Malone to follow a puzzle somehow related to Charlemagne with two women who may be enemies or may be friends.

Meanwhile Stephanie is involved in her own drama when Deputy National Security Advisor to the President Edwin Davis shows up in her office demanding help. They are opposed by the sinister and ambitious head of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Langford C. Ramsey. Eventually the two stories meld into one.

As in so many thrillers, the action in this book jumps rapidly back and forth between several locales, in this case, Bavaria/Antarctica and Washington/Virginia/North Carolina. The segments are short and compact, requiring the reader to pay close attention to which story she is reading. The two stories run parallel although intertwined through the entire book and as we get closer to the climax the segments are shorter and shorter.

There is no real character development again as is true in many thrillers. The author counts on the reader moving from excitement to excitement and not pausing to examine the characters or question the action too closely. When the book is finished, of course, it is time to wonder about the validity of anything that purports to be true. Helpfully the author includes a note explaining which things are factual in the book and which are speculation or downright fiction. It is important to remember that the book is, indeed, fiction. Don't assume the truth of anything.

But I admit I'm a sucker for a thriller that purports to explain historical anomalies in an engrossing and fascinating way. Such speculation is intriguing and thought-provoking. The question Berry is posing in this book is how ancient civilizations first and then later Charlemagne managed to have knowledge that we have just learned in the past century or so. Some have speculated on visitors from outer space. But Berry has a different answer and it is truly a fascinating and captivating one, to me at least. Much of the evidence, such as the appearance of a white-skinned man bringing knowledge to the ancestors of the Aztecs, is based in fact. The Aztecs, of course, believed this was a god (Quetzacoatl) and welcomed Cortez as his incarnation. But Berry builds on these facts with speculation and invention.

Berry also uses a Nazi think tank (the Ahnenerbe) that was studying the origins of the Aryan race and developed a pseudo-historical explanation. In the book, of course, they go much farther and make the initial discoveries that lead Cotton to the Antarctica.

There are actually so many historical and pseudo-historical events combined in this book that it is hard to keep them all sorted. It leaps from intrigue to architecture to artifacts to religion and myth. Perhaps Berry is a bit too ambitious and tries to include more than can be easily incorporated in a single book. The story lags from time to time and interest may wane in the confusion.

However, the myths and stories and buildings and religions are fascinating to think about and I, for one, am perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief to enjoy this speculation. The ending, however, left me with a great many questions and left Berry with an ideal starting point for his next book.

Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, December 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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