Book Log 2015 #29: The Patriot Threat by Steven Berry

The latest Cotton Malone romp has him flitting around the Adriatic trying to prevent a rouge North Korean (modeled on the brother of the current leader, who was busted trying to enter Japan on a fake passport so he could visit the Disney park there) from using doubts about the legality of the 16th Amendment (based on missing state records and some shaky legal machinations on the federal level) and a potential multibillion dollar debt owed to the heirs of a Revolutionary War financier to bankrupt the US. Can Malone, teamed up again with the obnoxious Luke Daniels and a female Treasury agent with her own shaky past keep the US solvent?

I'm still not sure this turn to basing books on fringe theories about the US government is a great move, either from giving the theories credence or from treading on ground that other authors have covered before (William Martin used Revolutionary War financing to drive the plot of City of Dreams, while the Masonic angles have been used in pretty much any thriller involving the Founding Fathers). I suppose I'll take it if it means avoiding another book like The Paris Vendetta, which was awful.

It also allows for a guessing game of what weirdness will drive the next book. Maybe something about the supposed one day presidency of David Rice Atchison? Or something tying in the recent trend toward marijuana legalization and George Washington's documented cultivation of hemp? Nope, it's about an apparent failure of the succession law to cover what happens if the President and VP-elect die before inauguration day, and something called The Society of Cincinnati and their past plans to invade Canada. Hmm.