Book Log 2014 #21: The Lincoln Myth by Steve Berry

A secret passed from US President to US President is used by Lincoln to strike a bargain with the Mormons, in which Lincoln promises to leave them in return for the Mormons not antagonizing the Union while they're trying to fight the Civil War.

Jump to the present day, where a splinter group of Mormons is trying to discover that secret in order to use it to gain independence. In doing so they capture a Magellan Billet agent in Denmark, and Cotton Malone is called out of retirement yet again to find and recover the agent, and perhaps help defuse the situation with the Mormons while he's at it.

Malone is saddled with a partner, a young Magellan agent who hits most of the stereotypical points for such a character: brooding, disdainful of working with an older partner, and skilled but without the wisdom to use those skills in the most efficacious way (there are personal reasons for some of this, which wind up getting solved in a convenient and slightly mawkish manner). I will say that it's a better attempt than the two people from the Napoleon book. Cassiopeia Vitt is also involved, as she has a relationship (also convenient) with one of the more colorful Mormon characters.

All in all this is a better book about a Constiutional/Founding Fathers question that one might expect, though Berry's afterword is unusually strident about his position on the matter (I am curious to see if he does the same with the forthcoming The Patriot Threat, which is based on the semi-popular theory that the feds can't collect income tax due to irregularities with the ratification of the 16th Amendment). But I do miss Cotton shooting up World Heritage Sites.