The Venetian Betrayal

Steve Berry

New York: Ballantine Books, 2008. ISBN: 978-0345485786. Pp. 576, interview

A while back, a rumor was circulating that Starbucks was lacing its drinks with some substance that would make customers addicted to their coffee. I don't know how that panned out (although I did have to buy to espresso makers, one for home and one for the office, to wean myself off the corporate product). However, I do suspect that Berry (or his publisher) is sprinkling the pages of his thrillers with some similar substance. I mean, how else would one explain this unhealthy need to read his next book after ranting about the subpar qualities of his previous ones? I read somewhere that Berry's writing is improving with each novel. I guess there are also people who believe that California's budget will recover any day now. This is the third Cotton Malone thriller, following hot on the heels of The Templar Legacy and The Alexandria Link, and the only thing I can say about any supposed improvement is that the plotting has become increasingly convoluted, losing any vestiges of plausibility in the process. The writing, I am sorry to say, is sophomoric at best: the novel reads like a screenplay for an action flick, complete with sparse (cursory and mostly visual) characterization and abrupt "curtain-down" transitions with mini-cliff-hangers of their own. In short, all the ingredients of a bad movie have combined to make this into a bad novel.

As usual, Malone—the implausibly fit retired Justice Department agent and now Copenhagen bookseller—is drafted against his better judgment into solving an international mystery with worldwide repercussions. I am getting a little sick of him trying to live out his days in quiet retirement and his troublesome friends or family constantly impinging on his attempt. The usual suspects are all here: the beautiful Cassiopeia (who, we are told repeatedly, is a somewhat of a lapsed Muslim), the fabulously rich but physically deformed (and contrary to the Greeks with their odd concept of kalokagatia, still possessed of a highly refined ethical character) Thorvaldsen, and the foul-mouthed but curiously incompetent head of Malone's former unit Stephanie. Their nemeses are the shadowy financial conglomerate known as the Council of Ten and the flamboyant but deadly leader of the fictitious and unimaginatively named Central Asian Federation (I nominate Centrazakhstan) Zovastina. As common with shadowy conglomerates and deadly leaders of unimaginatively named states, the two baddies are working at cross purposes trying to swindle each other while simultaneously trying to swindle everyone else. I was confused about who's trying to do what to whom most of the time. Some of the characters were, too. Some even developed mild forms of schizophrenia.

The huge secret that would unmake the world this time has, surprisingly, nothing to do with the Catholic church! It is... are you ready for this? The lost tomb of Alexander the Great! Zovastina, who fashions herself somewhat of an Alexander aficionado, is pulling all stops trying to find it. Her purpose is light on logic but heavy on dead bodies. After having read some account of a "draught" that once cured Alexander and his friend/lover Hephaestion of a deadly fever, Zovastina has taken it into her head that this magic potion would cure all sorts of illnesses, including AIDS (which she needs because her resentful lesbian lover is dying from it) and possibly even some of the viruses she's had concocted in her biowarfare labs (with the duplicitous connivance of the Council). Now, as someone familiar with the famous Scythian healthcare system and their advanced magic potions, I was all ready to credit the draught with its purported healthful properties. What I did not understand, however, how exactly Zovastina was planning to use Alexander's tomb as a unifying cry for her Centrazakhstan: a dead guy from Macedonia who was infatuated with everything Greek and lots of things male, who conquered most of Asia... is going to rally the Asians how, precisely?

OK, never mind, I take that back. After all, she does need to look for the tomb or else why would her henchmen crisscross Europe blowing up museums and private residencies in search of old Ptolemaic coins that hold a clue to its location? As befits any self-respecting villain, she does not have her henchmen simply blow up these places to cover up the theft of the coins, she has them incinerated with Greek fire (whose recipe she's conveniently uncovered) using a device which must have been inspired by long hours of observing a Roomba, the entertaining robot vacuum cleaner from iRobot, in action. Naturally, Zovastina also holds hostage the only guy Cassiopeia has ever loved, Thorvaldsen owns one of the coins, and... should I continue with the list of utterly implausible coincidences? Oh yes, I nearly forgot, Zovastina also wants to invade Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and God/Allah-knows who else although this will all be cloaked as a humanitarian mission after said countries have all been devastated by the germs she would secretly unleash on them. This has the US worried, which brings in the Prez and other high-ranking officials who this time, for a change, are not double-crossing scoundrels.

If this does not quicken your pulse, how about the secondary plot in which Berry brings in a character from his The Third Secret in order to pooh-pooh the theory that the body lying under a marble slab in San Marco, Venice does not belong to the eponymous saint? And whose remains, pray, did the Venetian merchants smuggle out of Alexandria? Yes, you guessed it, Alexander the Great's. You also guessed wrong. However, you can be forgiven since the eminent Alexander scholar Zovastina was also misled by Ptolemy's trickery. That wily Greek Egyptian Macedonian! Okay, so maybe grave robbing is so 20th century! Then perhaps the possibility of a real cure for AIDS would keep you reading?

I am not even going to bother with that one. Suffice to say that the Council's temp leader who used to work for Saddam Hussein in his bioweapons program before it was dismantled by the U.N. is in possession of said cure. Has been, in fact, for over a decade. But has told no one. However, he has killed scientists who appeared to have made progress in searching for one. Why he was cooperating with Zovastina is a mystery (and don't tell me he needed to buy the mountain where all the answers lie hidden: he could have done this quite unobtrusively in other ways). Of course, her plans for Asian domination are likely to interfere with his plans to make gajillion bazillions from selling the cure for AIDS, so he needs to have her killed. Given that she tosses women out of helicopters and has people quartered by trees instead of horses (all, apparently for fun), this could prove a bit difficult. Embarrassing her with the revelation of a lesbian lover, however, might discredit her politically... which would have worked if Zovastina had not been hell bent on finding the tomb of a famous European conqueror who swung both ways.

All of this and a lot of globe-trotting, arrow-shooting, horse-riding, Greek-fire-burning, and some assorted double/triple and quadruple crossing later, and the novel ends with the bad guys all dead, the good ones in triumph, and Alexander's tomb found but not revealed. It is unclear what exactly is going to happen to the cure for aids or Centrazakhstan's plans for Asian domination. A cliff-hanger? Sure. Nail-biting? Only if you are Lee Redmond.

July 2, 2009