Mark of the Devil »

William Kerr is a former liaison to the United States Congress for the Chief of Naval Operations. He is the recipient of various citations, among which were the Legion of Merit and the Navy Commendation Medal. He is the author of The Collector, Death's Bright Angel, and Judgement Call. He lives in Ponte Vedra, Florida.

Navy Special Warfare officer Matt Berkeley is on a new hunt. Under the seas off the coast of Florida, in a corpse-filled German U-boat, he finds a document lost for more than half a century, which leads him to the vaults of the German National Archives, an elderly widow and her horrifying memories of the Auschwitz death camp, and ultimately to the submarine's most guarded secret—a revelation that could forever disgrace the Catholic Church in the eyes of the world. Each mind-shattering twist plunges Berkeley further into a conspiracy littered with lies, betrayal, death, and the discovery of a single gold ingot bearing the mark of the devil.

Publishers Weekly

The discovery of a missing Nazi U-boat off the coast of Florida in 2001 is the catalyst for Kerr's predictable thriller, notable only for his willingness to let harm befall a major character. Soon after Matt Berkeley, of NAARPA (the North American Archeological Research and Preservation Association), stakes a claim to the sub, a cold-blooded assassin begins eliminating anyone who can prove Berkeley's claim. Aided by his private investigator wife, Berkeley begins to probe why the old wreck is of current interest, an inquiry that takes him across the Atlantic. While in Europe, he learns that the submarine was rumored to be transporting an incendiary document whose existence could still have major international ramifications. A gratuitous lesbian sex scene isn't enough to distinguish this from countless other action yarns long on violence and improbable escapes but short on psychological depth. (Feb.)

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