The Medici Return (Cotton Malone Series #19)

by Steve Berry

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A historical thriller with international intrigue from a master of the genre, Steve Berry's latest takes us on a journey through the secrets of the Vatican.

From celebrated New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry comes the latest installment in his wildly popular Cotton Malone series—now in development as a streaming series. The Medici Return takes Cotton to Italy to solve a five hundred year-old mystery.  

Cotton Malone is on the hunt for a forgotten 16th century Pledge of Christ—a sworn promise made by Pope Julius II that evidences a monetary debt owed by the Vatican, still valid after five centuries—now worth in the trillions of dollars.  But collecting that debt centers around what happened to the famed Medici of Florence—a family that history says died out, without heirs, centuries ago. 

Who will become the next prime minister of Italy, and who will be the next pope? Finding answers proves difficult until Cotton realizes that everything hinges on when, and if, the Medici return.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538770566
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	02/11/2025
Series:	Cotton Malone Series
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of nineteen Cotton Malone novels, five stand-alone thrillers, two Luke Daniels adventures, and several works of short fiction. He has over twenty-six million books in print, translated into forty-one languages. With his wife, Elizabeth, he is the founder of History Matters, an organization dedicated to historical preservation. He serves as an emeritus member of the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board and was a founding member of International Thriller Writers, formerly serving as its co-president.

Editorial Reviews

12/16/2024

Berry’s scorching latest thriller featuring Cotton Malone (after The Atlas Maneuver) finds the retired U.S. Justice Department operative once again battling violent men over events in the distant past. After a dozen years with the government, Malone has started a new life as a bookstore owner. But he’s drawn back into the fray by his former handler, Stephanie Nelle, after the Vatican is roiled by a scandal: a church official on trial for embezzlement and theft has implicated Cardinal Jason Richter—a close friend of the current pope, who will help select his successor—in his schemes. Malone breaks into Richter’s home and verifies that he’s in possession of stolen items, but suspects the cardinal has been framed. The plot thickens when right-wing Italian politician Eric Casaburi claims the Vatican owes him hundreds of billions of euros as a descendant of the Medici family, whose members, centuries earlier, bailed out the church with a sizeable loan guaranteed by the Pledge of Christ. Malone joins church officials on a dangerous search for that rarely issued promissory note. The plot offers few surprises, but series fans are likely to stick it out for the fast-paced, well-oiled action. This may not be top-shelf Berry, but it gets the job done. Agent: Simon Lipskar, Writers House. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

The Medici Return provides much to feast on when it comes to action and historical context. And, of course, adding Cotton Malone to the mix makes for one great reading experience. Berry’s typical lengthy Writer’s Note at the end of the novel is quite the treat for history buffs. It is so nice to marvel at his fertile imagination and tireless drive to discover new stories set in the arena of global history, which is the perfect impetus to explore them via his first-rate fiction.”—Bookreporter

From the Publisher

Scott Brick's pacing and level of intensity are perfect for Steve Berry's latest (Number 19) Cotton Malone novel. His baritone pitch reflects the gravitas of the unusual situation the former Justice Department operative finds himself in. In the 16th century, the Medicis loaned a large sum of money to the Vatican. A written papal promise to repay the loan, never honored, is now worth trillions of Euros. A right-wing politician, Eric Casaburi, claims to be a Medici and heir to the promissory note. Does a copy still exist? Can DNA prove Casaburi is a Medici? How will the church pay such a huge sum? Brick handles it all with seeming ease. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2025 - AudioFile

2025-01-18
The eternal jostling for power in Rome and the Vatican is juiced by a development that attracts the attention of the Magellan Billet and its foremost alumnus, Cotton Malone.

Eric Gaetano Casaburi, secretary of Italy’s National Freedom Party, anticipates a decisive victory for the party if Sergio Cardinal Ascolani, the Vatican’s secretary of state, will lend his full-throated support. Of course, the Church isn’t supposed to meddle in contemporary politics, but Eric makes an offer he doesn’t think Ascolani can refuse. Five hundred years ago, Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici loaned Pope Julius II ten million florins the Church never repaid. That debt is still legally payable to anyone who proves to be a surviving member of the Medici family, and Eric believes he can prove exactly that. Although Malone, called in to investigate the bona fides of Ascolani’s enemy Jason Cardinal Richter, has already found a fortune hidden in Richter’s apartment, Richter swears that he’s being framed, and the violent deaths of three anonymous functionaries seem to bear him out. So, Malone forges a series of alliances with Richter, with wealthy businesswoman Camilla Baines, and ultimately with an even more surprising party to prevent Ascolani and Thomas Dewberry, a hired assassin who’s both a sociopath and a devout Catholic, from swaying the upcoming election in return for Eric’s forgiving the ancient debt. An extended closing note shows how inventively Berry mingled history and fiction to weave this tangled web. Readers invested in learning more about the Medicis can be assured that the brief glimpse of them in a prologue set in 1512 is only the beginning.

Perhaps the single most striking feature of this latest dose of intrigue is that its title is intended to be taken literally.

Kirkus Reviews