Following his hit 2019 novel The Malta Exchange, New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry will release his 15th Cotton Malone thriller, titled The Warsaw Protocol, on February 25th, 2020.
Malone, who was first introduced in Berry’s acclaimed 2006 novel The Templar Legacy, has since emerged as a fan-favorite among a crowded field of thriller protagonists. Last time out, Cotton took on a power-hungry cardinal willing to kill in hopes of being named the next Pope, and a legendary secret society with a dark secret buried deep within their organization.
This time around, the former Justice Department operative finds himself in an impossible situation . . . where he must steal one seven “weapons of Christ” in order to gain access to a private auction that’s selling off top-secret information. See the official plot details and cover art below.
One by one the seven precious relics of the Arma Christi, the weapons of Christ, are disappearing from sanctuaries across the world.
After former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone witnesses the theft of one of them, he learns from his old boss, Stephanie Nelle, that a private auction is about to be held where incriminating information on the president of Poland will be offered to the highest bidder―blackmail that both the United States and Russia want, but for vastly different reasons.
The price of admission to that auction is one of the relics, so Malone is first sent to a castle in Poland to steal the Holy Lance, a thousand-year-old spear sacred to not only Christians but to the Polish people, and then on to the auction itself. But nothing goes as planned and Malone is thrust into a bloody battle between three nations over a secret that, if exposed, could change the balance of power in Europe.
From the tranquil canals of Bruges, to the elegant rooms of Wawel Castle, to the ancient salt mines deep beneath the earth outside Krakow, Malone is caught in the middle of a deadly war―the outcome of which turns on something known as the Warsaw Protocol.
Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of more than a dozen Cotton Malone novels and several standalones. He has 20 million books in print, translated into 40 languages. With his wife, Elizabeth, he is the founder of History Matters, which is dedicated to historical preservation. He serves as a member of the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board and was a founding member of International Thriller Writers, formerly serving as its co-president.
Fans excited to get their hands on the next Cotton Malone thriller can now pre-order Steve Berry’s The Warsaw Protocol wherever books are sold.
Praised as “one of today’s finest book reviewers” by New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds, Ryan Steck (“The Godfather of the thriller genre” — Ben Coes) has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). Steck also works full-time as a freelance editor and pens a monthly thriller column for CrimeReads. For more information, be sure to follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He currently lives in Southwest Michigan with his wife and their six children.