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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable Adventure Story in the Style of the Da Vinci Code,
By
This review is from: The Last Secret of the Temple (Hardcover)
Unlike some people, I enjoyed Dan Brown's THE DA VINCI CODE and heavily admire Brown's plotting ability. I'm not a big fan of most of the DA VINCI knockoffs and imitations that have followed, but Paul Sussman's THE LAST SECRET OF THE TEMPLE is a pretty good one.
THE LAST SECRET OF THE TEMPLE is an adventure novel that deals with a religious secret, one that may impact the struggle for power in the Middle East. Sussman spends a lot of time describing the political and social conflict betweens Jews, Arabs, and Palestinians, and I found this aspect of the novel quite fascinating. Unlike most novels of this sort, the main character isn't American -- the three major protagonists are instead Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian. Sussman takes a lot of time developing all three of these characters, and they are all interesting people to spend time with. If you're curious in hearing all sides of the Middle East conflict, Sussman does a pretty good job fleshing it out for the reader here, although he does get heavy handed at times. The pace of this novel is rather slow at the beginning, but it speeds up rather quickly by the half-way point. The last hundred pages of the book are pure action, with the inevitable big confrontation at the end. I could have done without some of the silly plot twists at the end, but they don't distract from the overall fun of the story. Overall, THE LAST SECRET OF THE TEMPLE is a good read with a lot of interesting historical content. It was apparently a huge hit in the UK. I'm surprised this book didn't get better distribution in the US, but it's worthing seeking out if you enjoy thought-provoking thrillers.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Even Better than His First Book,
By J. Chippindale (England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Last Secret of the Temple (Mass Market Paperback)
I approached this book with mixed feelings. I had enjoyed Sussman's first book `The Lost Army of Cambyses so much that I thought it would be impossible for him to reach such dizzy heights again. How wrong could I have been. This book is equally as good if not better.
The author has the uncanny ability of being able to draw you into the plot, so that you almost feel as if you, the reader are a character in the book. You can smell the sights and the sounds of Jerusalem, just less than 100 years after the birth of Christ. You can literally hear the sound of the hob nailed marching sandals of the Roman legions as the besiege the Holy Temple. Your are brought forward in time to Nazi Germany, where prisoners have to drag a mysterious crate deep into a disused mine and are then brutally murdered by their German guards. The plot then arrives back at the present day. A body is found in the ruins at the Valley of the Kings, in Egypt. On the face of it, it seems to be an open and shut case, but the more that is uncovered about the dead man by Inspector Khalifa the more uneasy he becomes about it. The Inspectors findings send him on a trail of murder and mahem that could turn the Middle East into a bloodbath. This is how all murder, mysteries should be written.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Astonishingly good read,
By Belle du Jour (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Last Secret of the Temple (Mass Market Paperback)
I have just finished reading this marvellous thriller last night. What a tremendously good work of fiction it is!!! Pulls you in from page 1 and takes you on an exhilarating ride. Mr Sussman is a very, very good writer and he really brings his Middle East setting alive - I almost felt that I was in both Jerusalem and Luxor, Egypt, so evocative was his writing. The plot is extraordinarily good and his three protagonists well drawn. We have the gruff Israeli policeman, the by-the-book Egyptian detective and the crusading Arab journalist. Their quest to find the original Menorah from the Temple of Solomon before it falls into the hands of terrorists really comes alive and the plot twist at the end took my breath away. I did NOT see that coming!
I cannot recommend this book highly enough for lovers of the thriller genre. It is far superior to the Da Vinci Code. Blows it out of the water, in fact.
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