The Malta Exchange by Steve BerryMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was my first book by this popular bestselling author, and I'll say it kinda worked for me. I found it decent to read, a little bit each day, over time, but I didn't really enjoy it until the last 20% or so. For me, 3 stars means I like it some, that the book is good enough to finish, and maybe good enough to pick up another. It's a successful series, so chances are I'll like one of the other titles a bit better. I should try.
The last fifteen chapters or so had action and conflicts and characters that made sense to me, and it was fun from that point on. I didn't feel that way about most of the book leading up to it. There are so many different agencies and individuals involved, many of whom are secretly betraying their side, that the interaction of goals and purposes is just a tangle. British, American, Maltese, and Vatican intelligence; an ancient military order; a couple secret groups within those organizations; traitors within the secret groups... It's too hard to keep all of them straight enough to discriminate between their true motivations and their apparent motivations. (IMO, of course.) I had to just read it like I'm watching a movie in a language I don't speak and hope it makes sense later. In the end, it did.
Anyway, I exaggerate a little, maybe. I've got other books on my shelves from this series and I'll give at least one more a try. I like the perspective of the author and his take on religion, so that's good, and the history stuff--about the Hospitallers in the middle ages, Napoleon much later, and Mussolini during WWII--are interesting and entertaining. I also liked learning about Malta. Nice.
Regular readers of this author will probably make a lot more sense out of the novel than I did. I expect they represent the good number of 4s that this book got. New readers--like me, maybe you--should probably check out the first in the series and see if it's an easier entry. I'll let you know.
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