I just finished reading The Devil's Bible, Steve Berry's latest Cotton Malone adventure. Malone is a retired former Justice Department intelligence agent and currently a bookseller in Copenhagen, but his old boss, Stephanie Nell, keeps calling him back for special assignments. This time, he and his girlfriend Cassiopeia Vitt are called in when the king of Sweden's sister is kidnapped. The ransom - an 800-year-old illustrated medieval manuscript, the largest in the world, called the Codex Gigas and also known as The Devil's Bible due to a particularly vivid illustration. The book was taken by Sweden from Bohemia as war loot back in 1648, and Sweden has finally agreed to give it back to the Czech Republic in exchange for their vote to accept Sweden as a member of NATO. Suspicion for the kidnapping falls upon Russia, who opposes Sweden joining that organization, but it turns out to be much more complicated than that. This is the 20th book in the Cotton Malone series, and I enjoyed reading it very much, but it does have a bit of a shocking ending, which I won't give away in case people out there want to read it. I personally think it would be a perfect beach read, and to emphasize that, I took the photograph above at Stuart Beach here in Stuart, Florida. But I do recommend reading this adventure novel wherever you might be.
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