The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury - Book Review

"It has served us well, this myth of Christ."

Pope Leo X, 16th Century

The Last Templar is a fiction book written by Raymond Khoury. Khoury writes two stories separated by hundreds of years yet connected by one object a multi-geared rotor encoder.

The book begins in 1291 in the city of Acre in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. The city is the last stronghold of the Templar Knights in the Holy Land. It is under siege and is soon to fall. A young knight named Martin follows his mentor Aimard out of the city and onto a ship. Aimard is given a small chest and entrusted a sacred mission by the Templar Order’s Grand Master. Martin hates to leave his brothers in battle and is unaware of what Aimard carries but only knows that the fate of the entire Order may rest with that chest and he must do all in his power to get it away from Acre and back to the leader of the Order in France.

Khoury then brings the reader into present day Manhattan. During a party for the opening of a new exhibit, The Treasures of the Vatican, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art four masked horsemen dressed as Templar Knights crash the party. They storm into the museum creating chaos as they smash several exhibits and steal the treasures within.  Attending the event, archaeologist Tess Chaykin finds herself near the leader of the horsemen whose focus seems to be on only one object, the multi-geared rotor encoder. He utters a few words in Latin before he takes it from its place and then escapes with the other horsemen into the night.

The FBI is brought in to investigate and anti-terrorist specialist Sean Reilly leads the way. It is not long before he and Tess come together and are drawn into an adventure surrounding the mystery of the Templar’s history.  The origins of the order, the creation of the church and the future of millions of people’s faith revolve around one dark secret just waiting to be discovered.

Overall the story is fairly entertaining though certainly not mind blowing. I read other people’s reviews of this work on Amazon and what I found was that if you have read (or watched) the Da Vinci Code this book comes across as a sort of copy of it though the secrets both books end up “exposing” are different from one another. I have not read the Da Vinci Code though I have seen the movie and I noticed many similarities between the stories though it didn’t really bother me. The Da Vinci Code did precede this book, which is a reason many people look down on this book.  The other people who will most likely dislike this book are religious Christians who don’t have a strong grasp on the origins of the bible or church history. While Khoury certain takes liberty with many historical facts including what conclusions can be drawn from them he does get a lot of his basic information right. So for those unfamiliar with that information it might be a bit of a surprise or come across as completely fabricated but for anyone with a basic knowledge of biblical history nothing in this book can be seen as that shocking.

The book reads quite quickly and like I said before it’s entertaining. It’s like watching a formulaic suspense/mystery film. You basically know where the story is headed and how it is going to end it’s just the details of how you get to the end that you need to be filled in on.  And while I pretty much knew where the story was headed by about half way through the book I won’t deny that I held on to the hope that the author wouldn’t end the story the way he did. Alas he took the easy way out. He allowed faith to be questioned to a point but ultimately placed its value over that of the truth.

The question one is left with is, if a person’s faith produces good things (charity, kindness, community, etc.) does it matter if it is based on stories/ideas that aren’t true? Could people handle it if they discovered their faith was in fact based on lies? Does it even matter if it is as long as that faith brings out some good in people? For me the answer is that the truth is of greater value no matter the consequences. For while good things can come from those whose beliefs are in fact false so too can evil things and I think getting rid of those evils greatly outweighs any good maintained by protecting a person’s beliefs based on false facts or ideas.  

Still I recommend the book to anyone looking for a quick, fun read.