In 2008's The Charlemagne Pursuit, author Steve Berry continues the adventures of ex-Justice Department agent Cotton Malone, who is pulled out of retirement as he hunts for the truth behind his father's death. It's an adventure that spans continents, generations, the White House, museums, cathedrals, temples, secret government warehouses, cable cars, and quaint European streets, featuring Nazis, U.S. Navy admirals, senators, deputy national security advisors, crazy Germans, and the president of the United States. 

So yeah, it's one of those novels.

 When Cotton Malone was just a child, his father (a submarine captain) was lost at sea, and the Navy quietly covered up the real circumstances behind the elder Malone's death. With the younger Malone now having retired from a life of spying and covert operations for the Justice Department, he's in a position to find out what actually happened to his father, and the men he commanded. Unfortunately for Malone, he's not the only one interested: twin sisters Dorothea and Christl also have a stake in the secrets their father died for, every step of their quest watched and manipulated by their mother; an amoral admiral who has risen to his rank over a pile of corpses, and is still climbing; Malone's boss, who investigates a series of murders that are tied to the original inquiry into the submarine accident that killed Malone's father; and the President of the United States, who apparently has a lot of time on his hands. 

As you might have gleamed from my tone, The Charlemagne Pursuit won't make my list fifty favorite books. Once Dan Brown's 2005 monster The Da Vinci Code lowered the bar for modern-day Indiana Jones romps through antiquity and myth, everybody and their cousin Roger followed suit. The Charlemagne Pursuit is Steve Berry's seventh novel, and fourth (in a series of six) to feature Cotton Malone, so he's no Johnny-come-lately. But if The Da Vinci Code is your thing, then The Charlemagne Pursuit will rock your world. In fact, it might rock your world a bit better, because it's better than The Da Vinci Code. That's not saying much, but Berry spins his tale a bit tighter than Dan Brown did his. 

And that, kids, is what you call "damning with faint praise." 

The thing that annoyed me the most about The Charlemagne Pursuit is an irritant that I've encountered in a lot of these epic thrillers. 

It's when the writer breaks sentences and paragraphs up like this. 

To indicate tension. 

Action.

Fear.

Because instead of sitting back and letting events flow naturally, Berry beats us over the head with a frying pan, telling us with the persistence of a woodpecker that what we're reading is exciting. And it just comes off as so contrived. It breaks the flow. It's like a Michael Bay movie. Exploding explosions. In slow-motion. Then again, nobody reads these books for their prose or style, so maybe I shouldn't complain. But it frustrated me when Berry engineered interesting situations, only to deliver literary cliché after literary cliché. 

(contd.)