The Charlemagne Pursuit: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In bestseller Berry's fourth thriller to feature ex–Justice Department agent Cotton Malone (after The Venetian Betrayal), Malone embarks on a search for answers about his father, Capt. Forrest Malone, after learning that instead of dying in 1971 in a nuclear sub accident in the North Atlantic, his father actually died while on a secret submarine mission to the Antarctic. Meanwhile, bad guy Adm. Langford Ramsey schemes to become the next ranking officer of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The two story lines merge as a group led by Malone races to Antarctica, where they find a strange underground city belonging to the Aryans, an advanced race who inhabited the earth at the dawn of our own civilization. A meticulous researcher, Berry carefully integrates such elements as Charlemagne, Nazis, ancient manuscripts, historical puzzles and scientific surprises into the plot. Those who relish suspense in the Da Vinci Code vein will snap this one up, the best yet in the series. 10-city author tour. (Dec.)
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From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Berry outdoes himself in his latest Cotton Malone adventure (after The Venetian Betrayal). Using his connections in the federal government, Cotton asks to see a classified file that details the mission that resulted in his father's death. He knew his father died on a submarine but none of the shocking details about where or why he died. But Cotton is not the only person who wants this file, and they kill to get it. Nazi missions to the Antarctic, ancient societies, and a valuable artifact from Charlemagne's tomb all play key roles as Malone uncovers the truth. So much is going on that there is enough material for two good books, let alone one great one. Mixed in with the complicated action, Berry finds the time to explore the characters as well, making this his most personal and best book to date. For all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 8/08.]—Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (December 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345485793
• ISBN-13: 978-0345485793
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #21,800 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Suspense, yes; but also new heights of implausibility, December 8, 2008

By	S. McGee (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I love a good thriller, and there just aren't enough of them around. So I was thrilled to discover Steve Berry's early novels. I enjoyed the first one or two of his Cotton Malone books as well. But as he has moved from one book to the next, the body count seems to rise, the characterizations have become more stilted, the action choppier, and the plots have tumbled into territory that become laugh-out-loud implausible. (Sure, Berry provides detailed author's notes showing exactly how he develops his plots, and the historical clues that he relies on, but the real test isn't whether he can make a case for it in the author's note, but whether it feels 'natural' to someone reading.)

I would probably have given this book a 3.5 star rating if the system allowed it. But the core plot device -- the quest in Antarctica for a mysterious superior civilization that preceeded the Mayans, the ancient Egyptians, et. al., that had a connection with Charlemagne, and that evil forces (in the person of a manipulative U.S. Admiral, Langord Ramsey) want to keep secret for their own reasons -- is just too strained for four stars.

Nor is the writing good enough to carry the book over the four-star rating threshold. It's choppy, a la James Patterson, with 94 chapters in only 500 pages, a lot of one-sentence paragraphs, and 8-word long sentences. The perspective keeps jumping back and forth between antiquarian book dealer Cotton Malone and his former intelligence boss, Stephanie Nelle. Each time a gun fires in one location, the action immediately jumps back to the other protagonist. These are all tools that all suspense writers employ, but again, they work best when the reader doesn't realize that they are being used at all. The only times where the reader can really settle into the action are those during which Berry's protagonists settle down to some serious exposition. "Early Sumerian texts... talk repeatedly of tall, god-like people who lived among them," says one professor (the target of an assassin hired by the evil admiral).

Sometimes, less is more in a good thriller. Cramming Charlemagne, the Nazis, a vanished experimental submarine, a quest for a mysterious lost civilization, a competition between two twin sisters for the truth behind their father's death (he and hero Cotton Malone's father died in the same submarine accident) and the homicidal admiral in a single book left me limp with exhaustion. I was so distracted that I kept having to page back to remind myself of some fact or plot twist. I even lost track of the body count (which is pretty substantial.)

Berry, early in his writing, focused on more plausible but still exotic quests: for the Amber Room, for the great library of Alexandria, the secrets of the Templars. In his last outing, the quest was for a magical spring that could cure HIV/AIDs, and the evil character was a female dictator of a central Asian nation. Don't ask me to swallow too many implausible plot/character twists in a single book...

All this said... I have still given the book three stars because Berry has a knack for what makes a good thriller. When Malone finally heads off to Antarctica, you can't close the book up. You want to know how all the pieces link together. And it's a good enough yarn to keep you occupied on a long plane ride, or when there's nothing you want to watch on television. So it fills a certain niche -- the kind of book you can pick up, read and then forget about. But only a Steve Berry devotee should be ready to pay the full cover price.

A final note about the final pages (I don't view it as a spoiler because it has nothing to do with the main plot); to my mind, it's kind of tacky to start the next book (which will probably not come out for another year) in the closing pages of the current one by having your hero creep out, Beretta in hand, to investigate a possible intruder. Since when did the TV cliffhanger phenomenon show up in books??

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This one is an out-of-the-park homer, December 5, 2008

By	Richard Derus (Hempstead, NY) - See all my reviews

Steve Berry does it all right in The Charlemagne Pursuit. He starts right, in the pulse-pounding submarine accident that triggers the action in the book; he ends right, with late-night antics about to begin; he keeps his story moving at a fast clip in between, with love, murder, betrayal, revenge, more betrayal, hate, then love again.

It's a pleasure to give yourself over to a plot-driven thrill ride of a book at least four or five times a year. I couldn't make a diet of them myself, because they take so much out of me. At least the good ones do, and this is very much a good one. Cotton Malone, our main character, is a man with a bitter past: A lost father, a failed marriage, a career he sacrificed what he now knows is too much to keep. His emotional landscape is a frozen tundra, or so he wants to believe, and he works hard to sustain that fantasy for more than half this book. Why, then, is it such a pleasure to read his adventures? Because Cotton Malone's chill is real, ladies and gents; because we're clued in to his brokenness and not required to experience it with him as it happens, but asked to believe it happened as it's told, most current readers and reviewers seem to be dismissive of the character's reality.

This is puzzling. Cotton Malone develops as a rounded and complex character during the course of this novel. The knock on thrillers is that the characters are simply cut-outs that move through the paces the author has designed for your entertainment, and I have certainly read my share of thrillers that fit this description. The Charlemagne Pursuit is not one of them, and neither was The Venetian Betrayal. Steve Berry writes a whacking good story, and he tells it through the actions of well-drawn characters. His villains are motivated by things that make sense in their world, his heroes are likewise people whose reasons to do what they're doing are consistent with the story we're told about them; if readers are not satisfied by the author's technique, I suggest that the fault could easily be said to reside in them, not in Mr. Berry's writing.

This is a very satisfying read, and Cotton Malone makes my list of people I'm glad I met in 2008.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Expanding into Berry's Universe, April 2, 2009

By	Timothy Haugh (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The Charlemagne Pursuit is Mr. Berry's fourth novel now starring spy-turned-bookseller, Cotton Malone. In it, Mr. Malone pursues the truth about his father's death. Forrest Malone was lost when the experimental nuclear submarine he captained went down in 1971 on a secret mission. In the course of pursuing the truth about his father, Cotton moves through a world of intrigue, both modern and historical.

At this point, Mr. Berry is quite adept at telling his tales, and doesn't usually falter. Of course, whether one will enjoy this novel depends a lot on whether one appreciates the alternate universe he has built for these books. Mr. Berry's first books are essentially set in this world, fiction though they are. In the past couple, however, he has been straying further and further into a world of his own making, with different world governments and alternate leadership. For the most part, it works except for when he mentions names like Dick Cheney, which only highlights the fiction in his world. To his credit, there is much less of this in The Charlemagne Pursuit than in his last novel, The Venetian Betrayal.

And yet, this movement away from the real world also seems to coincide with a move away from a real historical mystery which made his earlier books fundamentally more interesting--the amber room, the third secret of Fatima, the destruction of the Templars, the lost library of Alexandria. Yes, there was a real Charlemagne, but this "pursuit" is entirely fictional, testing the limits of suspension-of-disbelief for many, and even in this fictional world, only loosely impacts the story.

Despite the return of Cotton and his pursuit across Europe, the main thrust of the story takes place in the US, pitting formerly minor characters Stephanie Nell (Malone's former boss) and Edwin Davis against a new adversary, Langford Ramsey. Ramsey's goal is appointment to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and possibly a candidacy for vice-president). To accomplish this, he and his hirelings murder people all over the US and Europe. And, of course, he has knowledge of what happened with Malone's submarine.

The story works but it's difficult not to miss Cotton being the primary focus. Add to that the substitute of Nazi scion twin sisters Dorothea and Christl for Cassiopeia Vitt and their aging mother for Thorvalsen and the cast of characters isn't as strong.

Still, the final scenes and reveals in Antarctica are as beautiful and powerful as anything Berry's written, images that are hard to shake even as time passes after finishing the book. They barely win out over the ridiculous amount of bloodshed that Mr. Berry feels the need to integrate with these otherwise unequaled passages. But they do win out.

These past couple novels seem to put Mr. Berry at a turning point. He is an obviously skilled writer who books are always a pleasure to read. This one is no exception. However, there are nagging things encroaching on what made a book like The Templar Legacy a near-perfect thriller--moving the focus away from Malone, the creeping ahistoricity of the background, the increasingly standard thriller killers and chases. The last passage of this novel seems to give a lead-in to the next one (another blah device) but, hopefully, he'll be able to reach back into what made some of his earlier novels special and raise his game for his next outing.