The Last Testament [Paperback]

Sam Bourne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 23, 2009

The new, brilliantly high-concept religious conspiracy-theory thriller from the author of 'The Righteous Men', set against the backdrop of the world's bitterest conflict. April 2003: as the Baghdad Museum of Antiquities is looted, a teenage Iraqi boy finds an ancient scroll in a long-forgotten vault. He takes it and runs off into the night ! Several years later, at a peace rally in Jerusalem, the Israeli prime minister is about to sign a historic deal with the Palestinians. A man approaches from the crowd and seems to reach for a gun -- bodyguards shoot him dead. But in his hand was a note, one he wanted to hand to the prime minister. The shooting sparks a series of tit-for-tat killings which could derail the peace accord. Washington sends for trouble-shooter and peace negotiator Maggie Costello, after she thought she had quit the job for good. She follows a trail that takes her from Jewish settlements on the West Bank to Palestinian refugee camps, where she discovers the latest deaths are not random but have a distinct pattern. All the dead men are archaeologists and historians -- those who know the buried secrets of the ancient past.Menaced by fanatics and violent extremists on all sides, Costello is soon plunged into high-stakes international politics, the worldwide underground trade in stolen antiquities and a last, unsolved riddle of the Bible.

--This text refers to the Unknown Binding edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Bourne (the pseudonym of British journalist Jonathan Freedland) follows his 2006 debut, The Righteous Men, with another Jewish-themed thriller, a cliché-ridden hodgepodge. Weeks before a closely fought U.S. presidential election, disgraced diplomat Maggie Costello comes out of self-imposed exile to mediate a final Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. When a prominent right-wing academic, Shimon Guttman, tries to reach the Israeli prime minister with an urgent message during a peace rally, security guards gun him down because they fear he was trying to assassinate the prime minister. Costello joins with Guttman's son to track down the secret his father uncovered that could radically affect the negotiations. Bourne does nothing to endear Costello to readers by revealing the reason for her earlier diplomatic disgrace. The ludicrous denouement involves a high-ranking official confessing to all his misdeeds while unknowingly being filmed on a Web cam. (May)
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

Israel and Palestine are about to sign a historic peace treaty. When a seemingly unmotivated series of killings puts the treaty in jeopardy, U.S. government peace negotiator Maggie Costello is tasked with finding out what’s going on. She is shocked to learn not only that the victims have been carefully chosen but also that they are being killed to protect a secret that, if it were revealed, could alter the very history of Christianity itself. The book bears a slight similarity to Kathleen McGowan’s The Book of Love (2009), about the purported discovery of a gospel written by Jesus, but this one has stronger political overtones. The avalanche of thrillers involving religious conspiracies—thank you, Da Vinci Code—continues apace, and they range from the excellent to the execrable. Rate this one somewhere nearer the former than the latter, although many readers might find themselves, not long after they finish the book, trying in vain to keep it straight from all the others of a similar ilk. --David Pitt --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 439 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins Canada (March 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1554680743
• ISBN-13: 978-1554680740
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,185,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Read something else..., April 19, 2010

By 

Leanne M. Porter "mango555" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Testament (Mass Market Paperback)

Oh, I wanted to like this book. I even really liked the main character, Maggie Castello, initially. But I found the pace uneven and all of the characters confusing. I was never sure of who was an Israeli or a Palestinian...or even what role the US Government was playing. This had great potential. I just had to struggle to get through it and then to finish it.

Save yourself some time and frustration- read other authors like James Rollins, Lee Child, or Harlan Cobin.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not worth your time, December 12, 2009

By 

Miss Rose (ILLINOIS, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Testament (Hardcover)

This book had amazing potential. There was a mix of romance, history, and adventure. However, it was also one of the dullest reads I've ever had the displeasure to open. It started off interestingly enough when you find a woman unhappy with her life and in need of a great adventure. However, it didn't stay that way. Here are the major points that irked me.

1. She had made mistakes and became blacklisted in the world of peacemaking. However the writer is very repetitive with this fact. After about 150 pages of the protagonist complaining about her mistake, you say, "Alright we get it." You almost don't even care what happened.

2. There isn't that much adventure. Sure there is the basic points of people chasing them and needing to find out the "secret" information they don't have yet, but overall, it was intensely boring. It was simply the protagonist complaining and talking peace negations. (Now although this was interesting to me; it wasn't something that should take up over half the book in what is supposed to be a thriller).

3. The ending was just plain ridiculous. You have all this build up excitement about what is on the tablet and when you find out your like "that's it?" You expect this great discovery. However, I blame the author on this point. He could've made this the greatest discovery of mankind, however, he chose to write it as just a dull enlightenment. There is one point in the end that set my opinion on the book in stone. I can't say because it will ruin the ending for anyone reading this review, but let's just say it has to with Second Life and "being chased" in cyber world.

4. The outcome of the discovery was too simplistic and unrealistic. Harry Potter seemed more real then the outcome of this book.

I don't recommend. However, the reason that I give this novel 2 stars instead of 1 is because the author did very well in creating an interesting flair for the politics.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some improvment but still not great., March 24, 2008

By 

NoWireHangers (Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Testament (Paperback)

"Righteous Men" was called "The biggest challenger to Dan Brown's crown" and if my guess is right Bourne, aka. Jonathan Freedland, didn't choose his pseudonym at random (his books will be next to Brown's in most book stores). I complained about the uneven pace and incredible story (an incredible story is not bad in itself, but when an apparently regular mystery novel turns supernatural towards the end it demands too much suspension of disbelief (some authors can make the fantastic seem plausible but Bourne couldn't)).

Anyway, to get to "The Last Testament", the book seems _somewhat_ more believable than "The Righteous Men". Even so, it still doesn't seem plausible and thus never really got me hooked. It kept me reading but I never really cared very much about what happened. It may have been better as a movie than as a novel.