The Columbus Affair by Steve Berry

Tom Sagan gripped the gun. He’d thought about this moment for the past year, debating the pros and cons, finally deciding that one pro outweighed all cons.

He simply did not want to live any longer. He brought the barrel to his temple. The metal touched his skin.

He closed his eyes and tightened his finger on the trigger, imagining how his obituary would start. Tuesday, March 5, former investigative journalist Tom Sagan took his own life at his parents’ home in Mount Dora, Florida.

The Columbus Affair by Steve Berry

The novel opens with Tom Sagan trying to commit suicide. But finds out that his estranged daughter has been kidnapped. In order to save her, he is told to get his father's body exhumed and take out something which was buried with him. He does that and finds out that he is one of "the Levite” a keeper of a special Jewish treasure that has ties back to the days of Columbus and his voyages to the Americas. He traverses all through Europe, America, Jamaica and South America.

Tom Sagan is depicted as a loser who had been stripped of his Pulitzer because of a story gone wrong. None of his former associates wish to be seen in his company. Alle, his daughter, is not a likable character. She is more into the villain, Zacariah Simon than her father, Tom Sagan. Bene Rowe, a Jamaican has negative shades. Yet he redeems himself at the end. 

The novel has incorporated historical facts with story telling quiet well. Steve Berry has a wonderful imagination. He has retold the Christopher Columbus voyage very convincingly. It works great as thriller. Some might think the historical portions didactic but I found those interesting.