I finished James Rollins’s TRUST NO ONE earlier this week. It had everything I want from a historical mystery-thriller, chiefly the rediscovery of some ancient science or technology, a historical conspiracy/mystery to solve, and lots of exciting set pieces that take place in exotic locales.
In this one, a motley group of university students is thrust into a mystery surrounding the Comte de Saint Germain, an enigmatic figure who traveled Europe in the mid-18th century and who was purportedly an alchemist. There are murders, ancient riddles to solve, secret societies waging a centuries-old fight against each other, and a really solid blending of history, science, and made-up shit.
I read a ton of books in this genre back in the 2000s. After THE DA VINCI CODE came out, publishers released a glut of similar titles. The books section at the Walmart I worked at was stuffed with them. Unfortunately, most of these books featured crap writing and the most cliched characters one could imagine, such as Drs. Conrad Yeats and Serena Serghetti in RAISING ATLANTIS. By the end of the aughts, I was pretty burnt out on the genre.
TRUST NO ONE felt like one of Rollins’s earlier novels. It’s a standalone adventure, one that isn’t explicitly set in his SIGMA FORCE series universe. I prefer standalone novels in this genre. After two or three books, it’s like… honestly, how many biblical artifacts, lost cities, and historical mysteries can one person put to rest? (Indiana Jones, as the OG, is of course exempt from this criticism. In fact, the world actually needs more Indiana Jones novels in it.) Now that I think about it, the last Rollins novel I read was 2009’s ALTAR OF EDEN, which was also a standalone book.
One thing I appreciated about TRUST NO ONE is that the protagonists were somewhat more relatable than in other books of its ilk. The characters are not badass, special forces super scientists, like the ones that make up Sigma Force. That said, Sharyn Karr, TRUST NO ONE’S main protagonist lady, is a librarian in training who knows a martial art or two, how to fight with a knife, and pick locks. Plus, the other characters each possess some skill or knowledge that is useful to the plot. Oh, the hunky love interest is also 16th in line for the English throne.
In Rollins’s defense, it’s not like the characters can be too relatable. No one wants to read a book about some dude who makes spreadsheets and sits on Teams calls for a living, who is begrudgingly drawn into a race-against-time plot to find the lost library of Alexander, who doesn’t have the patience to solve riddles and is constantly getting knocked out. Realistically, such a character would likely be dead by the end of the first act…
Final thoughts: TRUST NO ONE is a fun, easy read in a genre I dearly love. I hope it’s not another 17 years before Rollins writes another one-off thriller.