The Novels of Steve Berry

The Novels of Steve Berry

• The Third Secret, 2005, about the Fatima vision, takes us into the Vatican's Riserva, "the special archive open only to popes"
• The Templar Legacy, 2006, revolves around a search for the lost archives of the Knights Templar
• The Alexandria Link, 2007, is about a search for the key to the location of the remnants of the ancient Library at Alexandria, Egypt
• The Venetian Betrayal, 2007, involves European museums being destroyed by fire
• The 14th Colony, 2016, sees hero Cotton Malone in Russia where he encounters a former KGB archivist, Vadim Belchenko; the archives of the post-Revolutionary American Society of the Cincinnati also play a role.

The Vaults (2010) novel

Original Novel Title: The Vaults
Author: Toby Ball
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2010.

A debut novel that features a North American municipal archivist, Arthur Puskis, who's in charge of an enormous building in the unnamed City which contains criminal justice records dating back 70 years. The Vaults of the novel's title are located in a subbasement of City Hall. Puskis discovers a duplicate file, something that should not have happened. After reporting this error to the police Chief, he's ordered to take his first vacation in 18 years, which dates the novel's chronology to 1935. From there the mystery deepens as he undertakes his own investigation.

The Forgotten Room (2015) novel

Original Novel Title: The Forgotten Room
Author: Lincoln Child
Publisher: Doubleday, 2015.

Lincoln Child, who also has collaborated on a series of well-received novels with Douglas Preston, sets his sixth solo novel in the rareified world of a Rhode Island think tank known as Lux. The forgotten room of the title references a hidden room within the huge mansion that houses Lux, the former home of the eccentric and wealthy Edward Delaveaux whose wife's ghost was said to still haunt a hallway of Lux.

The forgotten room contains a secret which one Lux researcher has already paid for with his life in a grisly suicide. Jeremy Logan, a Yale University professor who moonlights as an enigmalogist by solving unexplainable mysteries such as the Loch Ness monster or ghosts, is hired by Lux's director to investigate this out-of-character suicide. In doing so, Logan places his own life in jeopardy.

Early on during his investigation on behalf of Lux's director, he visits the institute's archives, located as archives usually are, in the mansion's basement. The think tank does not provide him with maps or signage nor did it occur to him to ask, so he has to find the archives on his own, where he eventually

"arrived at an open door with a sign that read ARCHIVES. Beyond the door, the walls and ceiling fell away, revealing a most impressive space bathed in bright yet pleasingly mellow light. Row after row of filing cabinets ran from front to back in achingly regular lines, but they were spaced far enough apart to forestall any sense of oppressiveness. At the far end, Logan could just make out another, smaller door, with what looked like a security station beside it. He stepped inside. ...

"Just inside the door, an elderly woman was seated at an official-looking table. A nameplate on one side of the desk read J. RAMANUJAN. She ran her eyes up and down Logan, lips pursing with an expression he could not decide was appraising or disapproving." (p. 78-79)

He's initially denied access because he has only a temporary ID card. He quickly overturns the archivist's decision with a letter the director provided him entitling him to unrestricted access. Not knowing exactly what he's looking for other than files pertaining to the 1930s, the archivist provides him with "blank document requisition forms." (p. 79)

After some discussion over the nature of his archival research and request to look for documents himself in the stacks, the archivist reluctantly agrees with the caveat that he "take no more than five folders from the stacks at a time. And please be careful when you refile them." (p. 80)

He spends a total of three hours at this research, "scribbling his observations into a small notebook with a gold pen," and realizes in the end that the files do not contain any records more recent than 2000 even though he was only interested in files from the 1930s. (p. 81)

The archivist informs him that more recent records are either with the scientists themselves or "'in archive two, beyond that door.' And she pointed toward the far end of the room." Archive two turns out to be off-limits to Logan even with his special letter of access. Seems he required "a level-A access or greater" according to the security guard who's armed with a nightstick and a can of Mace. "Then he [Logan] nodded, turned, and made his way back through the stacks and into the basement corridor beyond." (p. 81-82)

So the main archive stacks have no security other the guard who's at one end and who's purpose is guard against intruders to archive two. Filing cabinets for storage are so 1970s. Any archives worth its upkeep would more than likely not permit the use of pens to take notes. At least the part about the archives being relegated to a basement seems to accord with the location of many archival facilities with which I'm familiar.

The World Before Us (2014) novel

Original Novel Title: The World Before Us
Author: Aislinn Hunter
Publisher: Doubleday Canada, 2014.

This novel contains three timelines, one of which, 2010, has an archivist, 34 year-old  Jane Standen, who works for a London museum that's due to close from lack of funding.

The Devil Colony (2011) novel

Original Novel Title: The Devil Colony: A Sigma Force Novel
Author: James Rollins
Publisher: William Morrow, 2011.

Rollins' novel The Devil Colony contains a typical mischaracterization of an archives as a museum. In this case, it is really inexcusable since he's profiling the United States National Archives which even has the word archives in its name. Yet he insists on calling it a museum, not once, but at least twice.

"Painter scrunched his brow. Why was Seichan sniffing around the National Archives? The museum was a storehouse of America's historical manuscripts and documents. ..." (p. 84)

Charpter 9 of Part 1 has some of the characters visiting the National Archives very late at night:

"Dr. Eric Heisman was one of the museum's [National Archives'] curators, specializing in Colonial American history." (p. 88)

And again on page 91 Dr. Heisman is referred to as a curator.

The Thieves of Darkness (2010) novel

According to the dustjacket of Richard Doetsch's 2010 novel The Thieves of Darkness: A Thriller, "reformed master thief" Michael St. Pierre helps an imprisoned friend in a quest to find "a map containing the location of a holy place lost to the mists of time, a repository of knowledge and treasure predating Judaism, Christianity, and Islam."

Heresy (2010) novel

S.J. Parris' 2010 novel Heresy features the late 16th monk and early scientist-philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and the time he spent in England. The plot involves secret and old, even by 16th century standards, manuscripts and books.

The Red Pyramid (2010) Novel

Book 1 of Rick Riordan's The Kane Chronicles, whose title is The Red Pyramid (2010), is based on "a transcript of a digital recording. ... The author makes no claims for the authenticity of the recording. ..." Part of this novel for teen and young adult readers is set in the British Museum and features the kind of ancient Egyptian mayhem associated with The Mummy movies starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.

The Illuminator

Original title: The Illuminator
Author: Vantrease, Brenda Rickman
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2005
Novel about a 14th century (medieval) manuscript illuminator.

The Frankenstein Diaries

Original Novel Title: The Frankenstein Diaries

Author: Rev. Hubert Venables, trans. and ed.

Publisher: New York: Viking Press, 1980

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A brilliant and faux presentation of a "tattered bundle of ancient, decaying papers" the translator and editor received from a Swiss colleague in 1970. In his foreword, the English Rev. Venables states "My subsequent researches in the archives in Germany and Switzerland have obliged me to revise my opinion, in that I have established beyond all personal doubt the authenticity of the diaries as a true historical record of fact." Of course the fact that Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is a complete fiction means that these alleged authentic diaries of Viktor Frankenstein must therefore also be fictitious. Conveniently, the editor, who translated the diaries from German, died in 1980.

Other similar works to this one include The Secret Laboratory Journals of Dr. Victor Frankenstein by Jeremy Kay (1996) and the Diary of Victor Frankenstein by illustrator Timothy Basil Ering (1997).

The Atlantis Prophecy

Original Novel Title: The Atlantis Prophecy

Author: Thomas Greanias

Publisher: New York: Pocket Star Books, 2008

Contains references to an archives.

The Lost Van Gogh

Original Novel Title: The Lost Van Gogh

Author: A.J. Zerries

Publisher: New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2006 (hardcover); New York: Tor Books, April 2007 (paperback)

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A long missing Vincent van Gogh painting arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by courier from Argentia and thereby hangs this suspense thriller.

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Leonardo's Swans: A Novel

Original Novel Title: Leonardo's Swans: A Novel
Author: Karen Essex
Publisher: New York: Doubleday, January 2006 (hardcover); Anchor, January 2007 (paperback)

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This work depicts the time the artist-inventor Leonardo da Vinci spent under the patronage of the Duke of Milan, Italy.

The Audubon Quartet

Original Novel Title: The Audubon Quartet
Author: Ray Sipherd

Publisher: New York: St. Martin's Press, May 1998 (hardcover); Worldwide Library, May 1999 (paperback)

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A murder mystery surrounding the purchase by a millionaire of four original paintings by 19th century American wildlife artist John James Audubon. The paintings are declared forgeries by a critic when they are first viewed at a gallery following their sale. The critic ends up dead and artist and part-time private investigator Jonathan Wilder tracks down the killer.

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The Darwin Conspiracy

Original Novel Title: The Darwin Conspiracy
Author: John Darnton

Publisher: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, September 2005 (hardcover)

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A murder mystery that flips between the present and the past and involves the 19th century English naturalist Charles Darwin, there are some excellent scenes in the Manuscripts Room of Cambridge University. Part of the plot revolves around the discovery of a diary kept by Darwin's youngest daughter Lizzie.

Masterpiece

Original Novel Title: Masterpiece
Author: Miranda Glover
Publisher: London: Bantam Press, 2005 (hardcover)

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Performance artist Esther Glass sells herself at auction. According to the dust jacket blurb, the novel "gives us rare access and insight into the workings of the contemporary art scene...."

All the Names

Original Novel Title: All the Names
Author: José Saramago; translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
Publisher: New York: Harcourt Brace, 15 September 2000.
Originally published under the title Todos os nomes.

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Based on glowing reviews in Amazon.com and other sources, this novel is highly recommended. The principal setting is the Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths. So vast are its depths that

one poor researcher became lost in the labyrinthine catacombs of the archive of the dead, having come to the Central Registry in order to carry out some genealogical research he had been commissioned to undertake. He was discovered, almost miraculously, after a week, starving, thirsty, exhausted, delirious, having survived thanks to the desperate measure of ingesting enormous quantities of old documents that neither lingered in the stomach nor nourished, since they melted in the mouth without requiring any chewing. (quote from novel copied from Amazon.com)

The protagonist is a clerk working in the registry, also described as an archives, who commits the archival sin of removing records nightly from his office for his personal research. And thereupon hangs the tale by this Nobel-Prize winning Portuguese author.

Amnesia: A Novel

Original Novel Title: Amnesia: A Novel
Author: Douglas Cooper
Publisher: Toronto: Random House, 1992 (paperback)
Public librarian Rhonda K. Kitchens describes this novel as the "best example of modern gothic today by a Canadian writer." She notes that "the archivist functions as a sort of confessor...or is he the perpetrator???"
Divided into four sections or chapters, the very first is titled "Archive". The narrator describes himself as "an archival librarian" who works with plans upon first meeting one Izzy Darlow. The narrator is getting married later in the day, but Izzy quickly convinces him to hear his confession. The novel contains only one or two references to the functioning of the archives such as this one:

   The entire city is mapped in the Archive. We can trace the horizontal evolution of every building and street in Toronto. In a sense, the Archive is very much like Rome in Freud's analogy to the mind: an impossible city in which everything exists simultaneously. A building that was torn down a hundred years ago coexists with the present building, occupying the same site. Nothing is ever destroyed. Everything is remembered. (p. 9)
   

Many more references abound to libraries and the profound impact certain books had on Izzy.
The narrator listens to Izzy's story, misses his own wedding, dismissess Izzy, then wanders about until he assumes Izzy's name and perhaps even his identity.

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Suggested by Rhonda K. Kitchens, 1997.07.28

All the King's Men

Original Novel Title: All the King's Men
Author: Robert Penn Warren
Publisher: 1946 (hardcover)
This Pulitzer Prize winning novel was recounted (edited here) by Robert Shuster, Director of Archives, Billy Graham Center, Wheaton College, Illinois:
The book is mainly about the rise and fall of Willie Stark, but the narrator, Jack Burden, takes about forty pages to talk about his historical research into the life of his ancestor Cass Mastern, reluctant slaveowner and Confederate soldier. This research is based on, "A large packet of letters, eight tattered, black bound account books, tied together with faded red tape, a photograph, about five by eight inches, mounted on cardboard and stained in its lower half by water and a plain gold ring, man-sized, with some engraving on it, on a loop of string." Burden is sent the material by a relative who wants to know if they could be sold to a historical library. Burden says he does not think so, because Mastern was not a "historical significant" figure, so the relative tells him to keep them for sentimental reasons and Burden tries to use them to write his doctor's dissertation.
The rest of the chapter is the story of Mastern, as told by the documents and supplemented by other records Burden turns up. The purpose, I think, is to provide some counterpoint in the conflict between Cass and brother to the realtionship between Stark and Burden in the main part of the novel. The documents are brought in to represent the burden, specially the Southern burden, of history. They apparently never make it to an archives or repsoitory, but perhaps they deserve an honorable mention.
The film of the novel won the 1949 Academy Award for best picture.

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Submitted by Robert Shuster, 1997.01.07.

Airframe

Original Novel Title: Airframe
Author: Michael Crichton
Publisher: New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996 (hardcover); New York, NY: Ballantine Books, November 1997 (paperback).
The tragic deaths of three people and numerous injuries on a trans-Pacific jet flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles set in motion an internal investigation. Norton Aircraft, builders of the plane, conduct their own investigation to determine cause. Much of the novel centers on records-keeping practices required by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and electronic data recovery processes.
Quotations are from the hardcover edition:
During the initial inspection of the aircraft, a counterfeit part is the prime suspect for the pilot losing control. In order to foil counterfeiting (in this case after the fact) and to guarantee accountability

The FAA required commercial carriers to keep extraordinarily detailed maintenance records. Every time a part was changed out, it was noted in a maintenance log. In addition, the manufacturers, though not required to, maintained an exhaustive ship's record of every part originally on the plane, and who had manufactured it. All this paperwork meant that every one of the aircraft's one million parts could be traced back to its origin. If a part was swapped out and repaired, that was known. Each part on a plane had a history of its own. Given enough time, they [the investigators] could find out where this part had come from, who had installed it, and when. (p. 100)

Norton Aircraft maintained operational records for each "ship":

The ship's record consisted of a mass of documentation--a million pieces of paper, one for every part on the aircraft--used to assemble the aircraft. This paper, and the even more extensive documentation required for FAA type certification, contained Norton proprietary information. So the FAA didn't store these records, because if they did, competitors could obtain it under the Freedom of Information Act. So Norton warehoused five thousand pounds of paper, running eighty feet of shelf space for each aircraft, in a vast building in Compton. All this was copied onto microfiche, for access at these readers on the floor. But finding the paper for a single part was time-consuming, she [Casey Singleton, Quality Assurance/Incident Review Team, Norton Aircraft] thought, and--- (p. 118)

Having determined that a failed part was a counterfeit, when she viewed electronic repair records

Paper for the part appeared to be proper; a photocopy came up on Casey's screen. The part had come from Hoffman Metal Works in Montclair, California--Norton's original supplier. But Casey knew the paper was fake, because the part itself was fake. She would run it down later, and find out where the part had actually come from. (p. 123)

A counterpoint plot in this very suspenseful novel has Jennifer Malone, a TV investigative journalist, also tracing the historical record of the same problem with the Norton Aircraft model whose current accident Casey Singleton is probing. A videotape taken by one of the passengers becomes a crucial piece of evidence for both women. The company probe eventually becomes a race against time and a test of the evidentiary multimedia record to discredit the reporter whose story could prevent certification and production of a new Norton airframe.