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"It has served us well, this myth of Christ."
—Pope Leo X, 16th Century
In a hail of fire and flashing sword, as the burning city of Acre falls from the hands of the West in 1291, The Last Templar opens with a young Templar knight, his mentor, and a handful of others escaping to the sea carrying a mysterious chest entrusted to them by the Order’s dying Grand Master. The ship vanishes without a trace.
In present day Manhattan, four masked horsemen dressed as Templar Knights emerge from Central Park and ride up the Fifth Avenue steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the blacktie opening of a Treasures of the Vatican exhibit. Storming through the crowds, the horsemen brutally attack anyone standing between them and their prize. Attending the gala, archaeologist Tess Chaykin watches in silent terror as the leader of the horsemen hones in on one piece in particular, a strange geared device. He utters a few cryptic Latin words as he takes hold of it with reverence before leading the horsemen out and disappearing into the night.
In the aftermath, an FBI investigation is led by anti-terrorist specialist Sean Reilly. Soon, he and Tess are drawn into the dark, hidden history of the crusading Knights, plunging them into a deadly game of cat and mouse with ruthless killers as they race across three continents to recover the lost secret of the Templars.
"The novel's religious history is as dubious as its conspiracy plot, but anti-clericalists - and Catholics taking a break from the church's real headaches - could unwind with it." - Publishers Weekly
"A nice twist at the end spins the Christian history everyone's been chasing." - Booklist
This information about The Last Templar was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Sue McKay
Raymond Khoury was born in Lebanon but spent his teenage years in Rye, New York, where his family moved in 1975 to escape the Lebanese Civil War. After graduating from Rye Country Day School, he returned to Lebanon to study architecture at the American University of Beirut. During his years there, in between repeated flare-ups of fighting, he illustrated several children's books for Oxford University Press's Middle East office. Raymond completed his degree just as the civil war erupted again, and was evacuated out from the city in February, 1984, by the Marine Corp's 22nd Amphibious Unit on board a Chinook helicopter.
Raymond moved to London and joined a small architecture practice. The architecture scene in the mid-80s throughout much of Europe was going through a severe downturn, and ...
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