The 9th Man by Steve BerryMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
The first book of a projected trilogy (at least) spinning off from Berry's signature Cotton Malone series, I'm afraid this one doesn't give a particularly strong first impression of Luke Daniels as a character. By Berry's own admission, Daniels is like a younger and more impetuous Cotton Malone, but after years of reading Malone's stories, Daniels just comes off shockingly incompetent, the worst student Malone could have had. As for the story, Berry and Blackwood (that frequent collaborator with other big names in the genre, like James Rollins, and the late Clive Cussler) present some very interesting ideas of what could've truly happened to cause JFK's death in 1963, and it's an eerily plausible theory they come up with - one that rings particularly true after years of actual incompetence in the US government. Still, though, the book takes its sweet time revealing that theory, with more than half of it elapsing before we finally start getting into the usual Berry territory. Hopefully the next couple of books which Berry alluded to will be better collaborations with Blackwood, but this one, for me, is undeniably a dud.
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