The 16th Amendment to the Constitution is why Americans pay income taxes. But what if there were problems associated with that amendment? Secrets that call into question decades of tax collecting? In fact, there is a surprising truth to this hidden possibility.

Cotton Malone, once a member of an elite intelligence division within the Justice Department known as the Magellan Billet, is now retired and owns an old bookshop in Denmark. But when his former-boss, Stephanie Nelle, asks him to track a rogue North Korean who may have acquired some top secret Treasury Department files—the kind that could bring the United States to its knees—Malone is vaulted into a harrowing twenty-four hour chase that begins on the canals in Venice and ends in the remote highlands of Croatia.

With appearances by Franklin Roosevelt, Andrew Mellon, a curious painting that still hangs in the National Gallery of Art, and some eye-opening revelations from the $1 bill, this riveting, non-stop adventure is trademark Steve Berry—90% historical fact, 10% exciting speculation—a provocative thriller posing a dangerous question: What if the Federal income tax is illegal?

STEVE BERRY is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of ten Cotton Malone adventures, four stand-alone novels, and four short story originals. He has eighteen million books in print, translated into forty languages and sold in fifty-one countries. With his wife, Elizabeth, he is the founder of History Matters, a foundation dedicated to historic preservation. He was awarded the 2013 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers Magazine, has twice acted as national spokesman for the American Library Association’s Preservation Week, and is a member of the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board. He is a founding member of International Thriller Writers and served three years as its co-president.