Ex-agent Cotton Malone wants to know what really happened to his father, officially lost at sea when his submarine went down in the north Atlantic in 1971. But when he uses his government contacts to obtain the submarine's sealed file, he finds he is not the only person looking for answers. Malone is in the line of fire when he is attacked in an attempt to take the file. He is pitched into a lethal power struggle between Dorothea Lindauer and Christl Falk, twin sisters whose twisted ambition takes sibling rivalry to new levels. Malone and the twins embark on a dangerous adventure involving Nazi explorations in Antarctica, US government conspiracies, and a series of cryptic historical clues built into the legend of Charlemagne. Forced to choose a side when neither can win, Malone is determined to uncover the truth behind his father's death -- but will he be able to escape his own?
This was the first Steve Berry book I’ve read, but I wasn’t too lost. There are some references to the earlier books in the series, but nothing that’s crucial to the story. The one thing that is missing here is any sort of extensive character development. There are a lot of people intertwined in this story, but you never get a real thorough sense of any of them, even Cotton.
There’s two different things going on here, even though they are related. First, there is Cotton’s search for the truth about his father’s death, referred to in the book as “The Charlemagne Pursuit”. In addition to this, there is a military/political cover-up that is spearheaded by an admiral who will do whatever he needs to close to the President. I enjoyed both parts of the pursuit, but I think I liked Stephanie and Edwin’s chase of the killer more, especially their adventures on the Biltmore estate (probably because I just visited it last spring). The parts about Charlemagne were interesting to me, because it’s a time of history I’m not real familiar with. For one, I never would have associated Charlemagne with Germany. I’ve heard the theories about there being some sort of “first civilization”, but I never knew the Nazis went to Antarctica (even if that’s not why they went there).
Overall, I liked this, despite some slowness in the middle. The last couple of parts are written in a way that keep you turning the page to see what will happen next.
