Book #41 - The Jefferson Key

I grabbed The Jefferson Key from the library. It had a neat cover and a good story line. I read it on a camping trip and really enjoyed it, though the large number of characters had me confused a few times.

The book starts with the killing of a member of a secret group that are privateers, descended from patriots that originally helped the founding fathers defeat the British. We learn that they have a letter from George Washington granting them privateer status in perpetuity, for their descendants included. The four families that make up the leaders each have their own empire, which is not being threatened with prosecution by the IRS. Apparently they've upset some people and the government is interested in shutting them down.

Meanwhile Cotton Malone is back from Denmark, lured by his former boss to a hotel room in NY. He finds a contraption there that looks to be rigged to assassinate the President. He manages to stop the attempt, which was set up by 3 of the 4 families He starts investigating as a number of other plot lines come into play, making this book a little confusing to read.

Apparently Cotton was part of the Magellen Billet at the Justice Department, a covert group that he left. There much be other books that talk about this, and it seemed like I was missing a lot of the back story as I read this book.

It's exciting, fast paced, not great, but very good writing. I'll be looking for a few of the other Berry books to learn more about this cast of characters.