A review by ljjohnson8
The Columbus Affair by Steve Berry

3.0

A stand-alone from Berry; not part of the Cotton Malone series. I enjoyed the history in this one immensely; the modern part not quite as well. A disgraced Pulitzer-prize winning reporter, estranged from his family, framed for fraud, is about to take his own life when he finds out his adult daughter has been kidnapped and he must follow the instructions of a mysterious stranger (is there any other kind?) to save her. Thus begins a fast-paced struggle to stay one step ahead of the bad guys, save his daughter, perhaps regain his good name AND solve centuries-old mysteries about both Christopher Columbus and the lost treasures of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem. Great secondary characters in both the villain and especially the (depending on how you look at it) faulty hero/heroic bad guy Bene Rowe of Jamaica. My biggest problem with the book was the absolutely idiotic daughter. I found her so annoying and ridiculously dense and biased that I could never root for her wellbeing and that hampered my enjoyment of the book.