The Alexandria Link: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: alexandria link, upper choir, lower choir, Old Testament, George Haddad, Brent Green (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of bestseller Berry's second thriller to feature Cotton Malone (after The Templar Legacy), Malone, a former employee of the covert branch of the U.S. Justice Department, is trying to lead a secluded life as a bookseller in Copenhagen. Unsurprisingly, that hope is short-lived when his son is kidnapped and his ex-wife, Pam, asks for his help in rescuing the boy. The abductors intend to force Malone to reveal what he knows about the survival of the legendary lost library of Alexandria, which may hold ancient texts that could undermine Israel's claim to biblical legitimacy. Malone and his allies get mixed up in Washington intrigue and double-dealing as they try to identify the high-level traitor seeking to use the secret sources to change the dynamics of the Middle East. Characters implausibly leave enemies unsecured, placing themselves in unnecessary jeopardy, while the notion that the texts could have the desired effect may strike some readers as too far-fetched. Predictable plots twists (like the growing rapprochement between Malone and Pam) and superficial treatment of the issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians are further minuses.
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From Booklist

Berry, author of several big-selling high-concept thrillers, including The Templar Legacy (2006) and The Third Secret (2005), is back with another paranoid fantasy for fans who like their heroes to face unimaginable dangers in a variety of glamorous locations. Berry's hero, Cotton Malone (recently retired from the Department of Justice's Magellan Billet, which specializes in extra-sensitive international investigations), has reinvented himself as a seller of rare books in Copenhagen. Trouble, of course, finds him even in Denmark--first in the person of his ex-wife, who bears the news that their son has been kidnapped. Then the kidnappers convince Malone of their seriousness by torching his bookstore. The central conflict here comes from the fact that what the kidnappers want--"the Alexandria link," the key to locating the remains of the vanished library of Alexandria--is the one thing Malone, who knows the whereabouts of the link, cannot give them. So, with the conflict firmly established, and the villains showing their mettle, the plot is off and running across the globe, the story driven by a series of short chapters, each acting as a little time bomb. Trite characters and a formulaic plot (drawing, yet again, on The Da Vinci Code) get in the way, but Berry does make intriguing use of ancient history, and the action certainly zooms along. Fun reading if you keep moving and don't take time to digest. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (January 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345485750
• ISBN-13: 978-0345485755
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (130 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #145,459 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Boring and bad history, March 5, 2007

By	Reader "Reader" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

Save your self the price of this book and more importantly, your time. The book drags, the characters are wooden, and the "factual" history (which I normally enjoy in this genre of books), is riddled with errors that will be obvious to anyone even slightly familiar with the local history. A poor Da Vinci code imitator.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars COULD IT BE THE MISSING LINK?, March 30, 2008

By	Bookworm (St. George Utah) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Alexandria Link: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

With The Alexandria Link, author Steve Berry takes us on a search for the legendary lost Library of Alexandria which was assumed to have been destroyed but has in fact been preserved by a group known as the Guardians. We ride along with retired U.S. government operative Cotton Malone as his quest takes him from damp streets of London to a chateau in Vienna, from historical locations in Lisbon and the United States to a desert in the Sinai as he hunts for the document which could reveal a secret from the distant past which, if disclosed, could jeopardize the security of our modern world.

Berry has taken stories about actual historical characters like David Ben-Gurion, actual locations such as the Monastery of Santa Maria de Belem in Lisbon, old manuscripts, the works and conclusions of various scholars, the existence of an actual medieval society called The Order of the Golden Fleece, the fabricated correspondence between a couple of Saints and utilized these as the framework around which he has constructed of his story. For those readers who will immediately attempt to point out the historical discrepancies contained in this book, one needs to remember that The Alexandria Link is ultimately a work of the authors talent and imagination and this is why it is sold under the classification of fiction.

The one factual thing the book does point out (either wittingly or unwittingly) is that through the ages, religion has been used to incite wars, create economic chaos, disrupt the harmony that could potentially exist between peoples and nations, and ultimately has been the tool employed to satisfy the political aspirations and objectives of various individuals and countries.

As an entertaining distraction with which to satisfy your thirst for vicarious adventure, this book more than fills the bill.

30 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Fiction? Indeed!, March 4, 2007

By	J. Hirsch - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is fine for readers for whom real history is irrelevant. For those who prefer accuracy in their history-based fiction, look elsewhere. This isn't it.