Suspense novel review

This time: “The Last Templar” by Raymond Khoury

Following “The De Vinci Code”, a new genre of suspense novels developed that allegedly tells of historic events.

In the book before us, we travel back in time to the 13th and 14th century to the time of the crusades in the Holy Land, when the Knights Templars, an order that began with 9 sword wielding men, rose to defend the pilgrims that were coming to the Holy Land from robbers and looters that wanted to hurt them.

The order grew and grew, until it became a menace in the eyes of the religious establishment headed by the Pope, who was actually the protection of the King of France (and this is how the book invites us into France of those days).

After Acre fell to the Muslims, the last of the Templars escaped from the land of Israel to Europe aboard a ship, with an ancient and mysterious manuscript, that regarding its discovery the fascinating plot takes us. We travel in time from the 13th century to a daring robbery in our time at the Metropolitan museum in New York, a robbery that started out with horses and their riders, drawn swords in hand.

To solve the robbery, F.B.I investigators, led by a devoted Christian, enlist the help of a beautiful and divorced archeologist (to keep it interesting and to build up sexual tension). The journey takes them from the United States to Turkey, and from there, against their will, to a small Greek island.

The last chapters, that combine in them an imaginative journey, much like the “De Vinci Code”, of the pillars of the Christian faith, mainly Catholicism, as well as other religions and their basic set of beliefs.

The ending, which we will of course not tell, faces the absolute truth and the value of belief against each other and under what circumstances should one triumph over the other.