I'm Still Undecided on whether Cotton Malone is a Cool Name

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King two nights ago, and immediately delved into The Templar Legacy.  It's a rather recent novel that was published in 2006 by author Steve Berry, who I hadn't heard of before I found the book.  It is the first in an on-going series of books centered around the character Cotton Malone.  As the title of my post suggests, I'm still trying to decide whether or not that is a good name for an adventure hero.  I'm leaning towards yes, because Malone is a badass last name.  I can ignore the first name.

Anyway, the book has drawn me in rather quickly, so I suspect that I'm going to enjoy it.  It's sort of a mixture of genres, mixing spy novel, adventure, and mystery.  Malone is an early-retired spook (he worked for the U.S. Justice Department) who is now a bookseller, and he gets caught up in an intriguing mystery.  Judging from the short synopsis of the book, there's also some historical fiction thrown in as well, which really caught my attention.

This was just the kind of story I was looking for.  I was pretty full up on fantasy after reading LOTR, and definitely wanted to read something set in a contemporary period of time.  I considered reading the Jason Bourne series of books by Robert Ludlum, but balked at that because I've seen the movies and therefore knew almost all of the plot of the books already.  I also considered reading some Ian Fleming, but again, movies.  Before I found Steve Berry, I considered delving back into Tom Clancy novels.  His newest books have actually delved away from Jack Ryan and are focusing more on his son, Jack Jr., and I thought that would be a good place to restart reading him.  But sadly, I read that the very first Jack Jr. book wasn't very good at all.  I didn't particularly want to have to read a bad book just so I could get to ones that were better.

And then I found Steve Berry, who, like I said, I hadn't heard of until now.  The first book appealed to me, especially with the historical fiction bit.  (I love that Indiana Jones-type stuff.)  And, the books have been written recently, as well, which is also what I wanted.  So I made my choice and purchased the first Cotton Malone story.  It's the first of seven, with an eight due to be published this year.  So, if I really like it, I'll have quite a bit of reading to do!