THE 9th MAN marks the first starring role for Luke Daniels, a tertiary character from the Cotton Malone series. On the cover is a blurred-out photo, cleverly placed within the center of the number 9, that almost anyone would be able to identify as President John F. Kennedy. I was hooked right there as I am intrigued by all of the conspiracy theories surrounding the JFK assassination and the fact that we still have no definitive answers after six decades.

If anyone would be able to finally uncover the truth to this long-standing mystery, it would be Steve Berry. Berry has teamed up with Grant Blackwood --- who himself is a terrific writer and a U.S. Navy veteran --- to produce one of the best thrill rides you will read this year. It opens with Luke Daniels receiving an emergency call from his old friend and potential love interest, Jillian Stein. She confesses to having made a mistake that has put her life in danger and cost her grandfather, a retired Army colonel, his life.

"In each of his books Berry connects fact with fiction, often to amazing lengths. What he reveals [in his Author's Note] adds credibility to an already breathtaking novel, catapulting it to a next-level experience."

If you have followed Berry’s long-running series, you will recognize Luke not only as a protégé of the great Cotton Malone but also the nephew of ex-president Danny Daniels. Even with that pedigree, Luke carries his own weight and is a young agent who makes Cotton and his Uncle Danny proud. He travels to Genappe, Belgium, where Jillian has just survived a home invasion attack that killed her grandfather. They realize that this is no isolated incident and that whoever did this was looking for something.

We then are introduced to the book’s villain, Thomas Rowland, a 90-plus-year-old maniac who has sent forces of mercenaries in search of a rifle that he believes Benjamin Stein knows the location of. He didn’t, so their deadly search continues, with Luke and Jillian on their tail. Luke finds the rifle first, a Colt AR-15, with nothing particularly special about it. But he is no fool and has ideas about what it may have been used for.

Luke eventually circles back to his boss, Stephanie Nelle, who loops him in about Rowland and the men who are after him, the rifle and other artifacts. He is then turned on to a second gentleman who was associated with Stein. Although Ray Simmons has already passed, he left behind probably the largest collection of books written about the JFK assassination that Luke has ever seen. It is no surprise to him (or any reader at this point) that the rifle and everything Rowland and company are up to is connected to the tragic events of November 22, 1963.

The most important find are documents that give explicit results on rifle tests done following the assassination. They determine pretty soundly that Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire all of the shots. When you find out where the kill shot seems to have come from, you may think you can figure out where the story goes from there --- but you most likely would be wrong. That is the beauty of THE 9th MAN and the stellar storytelling of Berry and Blackwood, which I will not spoil with any further commentary.

All I will say is that I was especially moved (as I always am) by the Author’s Note. In each of his books Berry connects fact with fiction, often to amazing lengths. What he reveals here adds credibility to an already breathtaking novel, catapulting it to a next-level experience.