I am always amazed that Steve Berry is able to dig up moments from the past that you were never aware of and set them against the modern world in some cataclysmic way to tell an unforgettable story.

Berry is at it once again in THE ATLAS MANEUVER. Cotton Malone is a former Justice Department operative who is happily running a used bookstore in Copenhagen. However, it wouldn’t be a true Cotton Malone adventure if he didn’t step out of retirement every once in a while. That is exactly what happens here when he receives a call from an old friend, Derrick Koger, who has a favor to ask him.

"This novel is so engaging and comes with the expected Writer’s Note at the end, which separates fact from fiction. In this case, the Atlas Maneuver itself is purely fictional and from the great mind and imagination of Steve Berry."

Allow me to backtrack for just a moment. Every entry in this series has a prologue that connects the historical part of the story to the rest of the narrative. It is 1945 at the end of World War II, and the setting is Luzon, an island in the Philippines. We witness the Japanese army burying trillions of dollars in gold in subterranean caches, hopefully never to be found. This dwarfs what the Nazis had amassed during the same wartime period. What would happen if the Allies, particularly the US, were to find some of these riches? That is the premise of this 18th installment.

Cotton has been tasked with locating Kelly Austin, who is in the middle of a massive shootout in the streets of Switzerland. When he eventually finds her safe and sound, she knows exactly who he is. This is because she was once known as Suzy Baldwin, a lover from his youth who is now unrecognizable after a disfiguring accident she suffered years earlier. Believe it or not, she has an even bigger secret.

Kelly works with Catherine Gledhill, one of the heads of the Bank of St. George in Luxembourg. Their largest customer is the CIA under the name Black Eagle Trust, which has long held the riches they claimed from Japan in WWII within their vaults. Imagine the surprise when one of Cotton’s longtime colleagues, Cassiopeia Vitt, turns up at one of those vaults to find it completely empty. She is paired with Koger to determine where these treasures went and who might have absconded with them.

Throw into the mix members of the Japanese consulate who have a vested interest in these valuables that once belonged to them, as well as a Russian assassin, and you have the makings of one heck of a thriller. The Bank of St. George is planning to do what is called an Atlas Maneuver, whereby the riches taken from the Black Eagle Trust would be put into bitcoin and then used to control the global economies of many unsuspecting nations. Leave it to Steve Berry to make international finance interesting!

The individual narratives of the various characters will converge on an outdoor meeting under a giant tent led by Catherine and all the important players who will be part of the Atlas Maneuver. That is until the tent literally blows up. This novel is so engaging and comes with the expected Writer’s Note at the end, which separates fact from fiction. In this case, the Atlas Maneuver itself is purely fictional and from the great mind and imagination of Steve Berry. But like all of his prior works, it leaves readers with a sense of dread and the question “What if?”