The Paris Vendetta

Cotton Malone is relaxing in Copenhagen when a Secret Service agent arrives at his bookshop with assassins on his heels and a story about the Paris Club, a secretive cabal of international financiers with plans to manipulate the global economy. The investigation leads Malone toward Napoleon's legendary hidden treasure, distributed across Europe during the emperor's campaigns and never recovered, while his Danish friend Thorvaldsen pursues a private vendetta that complicates Malone's every calculation. Steve Berry's fifth Malone novel maintains the series' characteristic velocity.

Scott Brick narrates with the practiced authority he brings to the entire Cotton Malone series, keeping the historical Napoleon material and the contemporary financial thriller elements in productive tension. The dual-timeline structure, alternating between the emperor's last days in exile and the modern hunt for his treasure, suits Brick's facility with historical context. At under fourteen hours, this is a lean, efficiently constructed entry in one of the genre's most consistent franchises.