Review: What price for the killing of MLK?

Review of: The Bishop’s Pawn
Author: Steve Berry

Publisher: Minotaur Books
Source: Purchase, Half Price Books
Grade: B

It all started when a rash young naval officer turned lawyer tried to help a friend through a nasty divorce. That was before his survelliance of the friend’s erring wife turned into a shoot-out that landed him in jail, and in the bad graces of his commanding officer. So how can he say no when the Justice Department lawyer, Stephanie Nelle, who bails him out asks only a simple favor in return – retrieval of a rare coin from a wrecked ship?

Except when the young officer’s name is Cotton Malone – the hero of a dozen thrillers from another lawyer named Steve Berry – well, things are never simple. As Berry proves in his latest thriller, The Bishop’s Pawn, in which Malone no sooner reaches the shipwreck than he finds himself deep in an investigation of the assassination of revered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Soon Malone is running for his own life, as he tries to learn how the rare coin – the only 1933 gold Double Eagle known to exist outside a museum – is tied to King’s assassination. And how it got into the hands of the beautiful daughter of a member of King’s inner circle. And why, in the book’s 1990-time period, more than 30 years after that 1968 assassination, so many people are willing to kill to recover the secret records behind the killing.

Berry is adept at building thrillers from historical conundrums, but The Bishop’s Pawn is the first that deals with more recent history, history he admitted during a recent Dallas visit was exceptionally difficult to write because King’s assassination was an event he still remembers – as do so many others. The possibility of writing about it has been on his mind for a decade, but he delayed releasing a book until this year, the 50^th anniversary of King’s fatal shooting in 1968.

As if to underline the topic’s personal importance, Berry has also made The Bishop’s Pawn the origin story for his series hero, Cotton Malone, as well as the first novel ever written solely from Malone’s first-person viewpoint. 

In previous books, Berry has used multiple third-person narratives to tell his stories. And Malone has only been known as a man already retired from a career in the U.S. Department of Justice. This time we get a young, brash and often-clueless hero for whom cell phones are still cutting-edge technology (he, personally, doesn’t use them unless they’re forced upon him) and the change does a lot to make Malone more personable.

But though the first-person viewpoint gives the reader a sense of greater intimacy with events, its also underlines one of the problems attendant on historical fiction – the need for explanations of the events. Berry’s use of FBI memos and recordings (some real, some ingenious fictions), are at first fascinating but become pages to be skipped the lengthier they become. Also tedium-inducing are Berry’s well-meant attempts to assure readers he understands the groundbreaking nature of King’s achievements even as he poses justification for his conclusions about who was ultimately responsible for King’s death.  

Unusually for Berry’s stories, the action in The Bishop’s Pawn takes place almost solely in Florida where Berry resides, and Malone (and readers) get a scenic tour of the state – from the Dry Tortugas, site of a 19^th century fort turned national park; to the gigantic freshwater Lake Okeechobee; to St. Augustine, site of one of King’s early civil rights demonstrations; to Disneyworld; and more. Malone, however, has little time for sightseeing, taking the tour at a dead run as he variously flees park rangers, a vengeful Cuban informant, and an array of present and former FBI rogues. 

Looming over everything is the tragedy of Martin Luther King’s death. The role of King’s (fictional) associate, Benjamin Foster has estranged him from his daughter, now possessor of the fabled Double Eagle coin, and by turns Malone’s ally and enemy. Will recordings of conversations between Foster and King destroy both a daughter’s trust in her father and King’s legacy?

Just when I hadn’t thought there could be any more possible theories about the death and its chillingly oddball perpetrator, James Earl Ray, Berry serves up a new and shocking solution.