The Last Prophecy [Paperback]

Jon Land (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2004

1945: While liberating a concentration camp, an American medical unit uncovers something beneath a body-laden trench. Sixty years later, the survivors of that unit are systematically murdered because of what they saw.

The Present: Enter former Palestinian-American detective Ben Kamal and his Israeli counterpart, Danielle Barnea. Working for the United Nations, Ben and Danielle are forced to return to the Middle East to investigate a massacre in a Palestinian village. The quickly learn that the roots of that massacre lie elsewhere, in another era, on another continent.

While Ben follows the trail of the shadowy force responsible, Danielle finds herself swept into a maelstrom where the past and the present collide, joined by an ancient text of prophecies that predicts a cataclysmic event about to strike the United States. The only way to change a fate foretold long before is to decipher a cryptic message shrouded in secrecy and guarded by a hidden army.

As time ticks down, Ben and Danielle face off against a new and all-powerful enemy with its own crazed reasons for wanting America's very way-of-life destroyed. Their only hope: to use The Last Prophecy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Land's series seems to gain momentum with every installment, and his latest is as timely and extravagantly plotted as ever. In their seventh adventure, dynamic law enforcement duo and lovers Ben Kamal and Danielle Barnea are dispatched by their new employer, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, to investigate a massacre in the Palestinian village of Bureij. Ben, a rugged Palestinian-American detective, and Danielle, a beautiful former Israeli police inspector, soon discover that the massacre has little to do with current tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, the attack is rooted in a discovery made by Allied soldiers in 1945. The mysterious cache of steel canisters uncovered under stacks of corpses at Buchenwald pulses beneath the present-day action like a ticking time bomb. Everyone who has come into contact with the canisters in the half-century since their discovery has wound up dead, and a Nostradamus prophecy of universal destruction adds another layer of menace to the tale. Ben and Danielle's investigation leads them into conflict with renegades all over the globe, including the last vestiges of the Iraqi Special Republican Guard and a network of rogue ex-Soviet moles. Land's prose can be a little overheated, but the breakneck pace and chockablock plotting leave protagonists (and the civilized world) constantly teetering on the brink of destruction. Highly entertaining from start to finish, this is prime escapist fiction, implausible yet riveting.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In this seventh installment in Land's action series featuring U.N. investigators Ben Kamal and Danielle Barnea, the two must unlock the mysteries of a sixteenth-century prophecy in order to stop the destruction of the U.S. Barnea, trained as an assassin by the Israelis and her lover, Palestinian American Kamal, a former cop, race all over the globe as they try to uncover a cabal of former Soviet Union moles, planted deep within the governments of the world, who are using Iraqi terrorists to further their devastating goals. The resourceful pair careens from one death-defying encounter to another as they attempt to ferret out the identities of the villainous masterminds (one of whom will be sure to shock even the most assiduous of readers) before America ends up in ruins. Land taps every element the thriller genre has to give--from Nazis to Nostradamus, from South American drug lords to New England cyber-sleuths. Recommended for all popular reading collections--the Nostradamus angle should appeal to fans of the popular novel The Da Vinci Code (2003). Michael Gannon
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; First Edition edition (November 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765348500
• ISBN-13: 978-0765348500
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,255,453 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent storytelling, April 6, 2004

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Last Prophecy (Hardcover)

She was the commander of the Israeli National Police but became persona non grata in the country she loved. Ben Kamal was a former Palestinian-American detective until he realized that nothing he could do could change the political climate. Unable to stomach the hopelessness of the situation and wanting to be with his exiled lover Danielle Barnea, they accept jobs in the safety and security service of the United Nations and live together in London.

They are sent to the Palestinian village of Bureij where almost a hundred residents including their United Nations teachers were massacred in what was made to look like an atrocity of the Israeli government. Ben learns that the killers were Iraqi Special Forces sent out of the country before the American led invasion. The target of the killings was the son of one of the men of the 121st Evacuation Hospital who was sent to Buchenwald who found four trunks under a mass grave. In the present, the remaining members of the 121st are being killed off one by one for what they know. Danielle and Ben soon uncover a plot that will make Sept 11 look minor.

Once again Jon Land delivers an action packed thriller that takes events from today's headlines and weaves them into a terrific story. Danielle and Ben are perfectly suited for their new jobs because they are citizens of the world since no country will claim them yet they fight to make the globe a safer place to live in. Though in many ways similar to previous tales in the exciting series, THE LAST PROPHECY is an outstanding one sitting reading experience.

Harriet Klausner

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I like my thrillers a little more believeable!, October 28, 2006

By 

D. West "Bones" (Boise, Idaho United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Last Prophecy (Paperback)

The premise was good and could have made for a good story line. But come on, please.... am I really supposed to believe that Ben and Danielle can conduct all of these super human exploits with hardly a scratch? They seem to pop up everywhere, just in time to save the day, while everyone else gets picked off like fleas! Their wounds seem to heal supernaturally!

And then I'm supposed to believe that a pot head who's stupid enough to believe that he's going to get all A's for the semester because he's helping the government, can crack the computer code that none of the big boys can? Nah...

I like my protagonists a little more human, capable of mistakes, and more believeable and thereby likeable.

I don't think I'll be reading any more of Land's books for a while. This one supposedly took place over a 12 day period and that was about 11 days too long for me.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thrilling Ride!, January 26, 2005

By 

Gary Turner (Powder Springs, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Last Prophecy (Hardcover)

Jon Land has written an entertaining book starring the team of Barnea and Kamal. Called in to investigate a mass murder of civilians in the Middle East, they quickly uncover a terrorist plot that includes lost prophecies of Nostrodamus. If you enjoyed Angels and Demons, you will enjoy this.