The Berlin Package

Riva’s unconvincing follow-up to 2015’s Murder on Safari finds film producer Pero Baltazar fearing for his life on a plane that’s taking him from Washington, D.C., to Berlin, because it’s flying too high and is in danger of losing power and crashing into the Atlantic. Fortunately, Pero knows a lot about planes and is able to persuade a crew member to let him into the cockpit, where the pilot realizes Pero is right and takes the aircraft down to a safe altitude. In Berlin, Pero, who does part-time work for the State Department and the CIA, receives a briefcase from a U.S. diplomat he knows. The briefcase contains a plastic bag with flakes of paper suspended in a radioactive liquid; the paper, Pero later learns, came from labels on some gold bars that “the U.S. Treasury was swapping via a Swiss bank and a dealer.” In addition to some awkward prose, readers should be prepared for unengaging characters in this unlikely tale of international intrigue. (Apr.)