"The Last Templar" miniseries is now available on DVD! For more information, click here.
"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.
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The Knights Templar, a small monastic military order formed in the early 1100s to protect travelers to the Holy Land, eventually grew and became wealthy beyond imagination. In 1307, the French king, feeling jealous and greedy, killed off the Templars, and by 1311, the last master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake. The whereabouts of the Templars' treasure--and their secrets--have been the subject of legend ever since. Now, a new thriller tries to follow in the steps of The Da Vinci Code.
I was born in Beirut, a Scorpio and the youngest of three. The civil war broke out there when I was 14 and my parents, in a noble effort to keep us alive into adulthood, wisely moved us to Rye, NY. I stayed there until I graduated from Rye Country Day School, then, intent on thwarting my parents' nurturing instincts, I decided to go back to Lebanon to study architecture at the American University of Beirut. Which, in hindsight, wasn't as nutty a decision as you might think. Those years, marred by repeated flare-ups of fighting and a couple of invasions, were emotionally taxing, harrowing, sometimes dangerous, often maddeningly frustrating, but always intense in the most visceral sense of the word and, weirdly enough, I wouldn't have missed them for the world. Maybe that's the Scorpio in me...
So there I was, gingerly studying architecture in the hopes of one day helping rebuild the city (rumours that a local cabal of intensely purist architects was having ugly buildings selectively blown up remain unproven). The civil war erupted again a few weeks after I graduated, and I was evacuated out from the beach down the road from our apartment on a sunny but sad day in February, 1984, by the Marine Corp's 22nd Amphibious Unit on board a Chinook helicopter, to whom I'll be eternally grateful (the Marines, not the chopper).
I ended up in London, where I joined a small architecture practice. The architecture scene in Europe was pretty bleak at that time, so I decided to explore other career options. I got an MBA at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and joined an investment bank, selling gold-linked convertibles and other far less exotic financial instruments, surrounded by Gekko wannabes and hating waking up every day. In fairness, I have to credit those 'wilderness' years with one wonderful thing: meeting my gorgeous wife, who tolerated my exhausting yearnings for something more fulfilling and eventually gave me two incredible daughters.
I left the glamorous (at the time, anyway) world of investment banking after three years to return to my creative roots. I bounced around for a while, trying different things, and during a business trip to the Bahamas (don't ask), I met a banker who dabbled in the film business. I've always been a film geek and harbored a burning desire to make movies, so at dinner one night, I bounced an idea off him, and the idea struck a chord. I had a new partner, and we agreed to develop my idea into a screenplay -- by hiring a professional screenwriter he'd worked with.
Several conference calls later, the outlines coming back from Los Angeles weren't what I had in mind. I offered to write an outline myself. When I faxed my notes to my partner (yes, this was in the early 90s, long before email), he called me up and said, "Our man in L.A. isn't going to write this movie for us. You are. You're a writer."
So I did. And it got shortlisted for the Fulbright Fellowship in Screenwriting award, which I had to apply for under a friend's name (I wasn't eligible, but that's another long story). My next script, a semi-autobiographical screenplay about my college years during the war, was also nominated for the award a year later. Then the next year, in 1995, I optioned the film rights to Melvyn Bragg's novel, THE MAID OF BUTTERMERE and wrote the adaptation myself while completing an original screenplay called... THE LAST TEMPLAR. Buttermere found its way to Robert DeNiro, who announced in Variety that he would be producing it and playing the lead. The Last Templar... well, if you're reading this, you know that after ten years or so, it managed the quantum leap off my laptop's hard drive and into novel form, but that's a longer story, one I'll go through in a separate post...
Since then, and after working as a screenwriter and a producer on shows like the BBC series Spooks, (MI-5 in the US), I'm now solely focused on the novels, the fifth of which is THE DEVIL'S ELIXIR.
And that's about it... Thanks for taking the time to explore my ramblings, and if you do pick up one of my books, I hope you have a blast reading it. And let me know-connect with me on facebook on my Official Fan Page (and NOT on one of the others that I don't manage!). Enjoy!
I got this book based on the premise and was initially engaged. Early on, the action moved briskly enough that I was willing to overlook its faults: The prose was flowery and cliched, the characters a little one-dimensional. Think of the genre featuring the 'brilliant, beautiful headstrong ' and you've got it down pat.
Not surprisingly, there's also the 'gifted-but-haunted-by-past-demons' FBI agent' and the associated cast of stock characters.
Of course, nobody acts remotely like a real person and a series of unrealistic actions mixed with coincidences keep them all moving toward the inevitable conclusion.
That said, I initially enjoyed it in spite of it faults and found it well paced. Eventually, though, it bogs down in a love story and its need to connect the dots with lengthy historical backstory.
I won't bother re-hashing the story line, as you can read the summary in the publishing reviews. This is Khoury's first novel, and it's a pretty good entry effort. You can see that he's an experienced storyteller (screenwriting) from the pacing, settings and well-described visuals.
His opening scene is gripping, and the interplay from modern times to the Crusader era is very well done. I really enjoyed the archeological aspects of this book, and thought their exposition was set forth in an interesting and engaging manner.
The comparisons to "The Da Vinci Code" are going to be inevitable, I think. I'll preface by saying I didn't like Brown's book and found his attacks on Christianity muddled, boring and implausible, as well as offensive.
That having been said, there's a point in this book (at about page 300 in the hard cover version) where you'll roll your eyes and think, "Oh, no, here we go again". I know I did. Well, don't. Give the book a chance. The last half page of the book clears things up well, at least in my estimation.
So, you ask, why only three stars? Well, it was very subjective, and may not be an issue for some readers, but I found the book didn't really engage me on an emotional level. I found the protagonists (Tess and Reilly) to be simple (as opposed to complex and fully fleshed-out) characters, as were the two antagonists (whom I won't name in the interest of not revealing the plot line). The modern-day storyline (the majority of the book) was a fairly straightforward adventure story, and on that level works well. Surprisingly, the real treat of the book was the interwoven Crusader-era story, which I found to be better visualized than the rest of the book, with more fully realized characterization....
I don't think you'll be disappointed if you buy this book. I certainly am glad I read it, and look forward to more from Khoury as his skills develop.Read more ›
A recent review called this book "another Da Vincy Code knock-off". I utterly disagree. It is simply another take on a currently popular topic (think about it - the premise of The Da Vinci Code, for example, is almost identical to what has been described in a number of earlier novels, but nobody complained about that - and there is actually a great German book called 'Das Jesus Video' by Andreas Eschbach, which I hope will be available in English soon, as it is truly a great novel, with yet another spin on everything...).
I enjoyed "The Last Templar" from beginning to end. I've always been partial to novels spanning several centuries, and the ideas put forth in this novel are rather intriguing, especially considering what has been happening in our world recently. The Templars have long fanned the imaginations of many, and there is still a lot of mystery and secrecy which makes their history so interesting. Khoury cleverly weaves known facts, speculations, opinions together with his personal analysis and a lot of imagination.
Like the DaVinci Code, this a fast-paced read that you won't want to put down. It's no surprise that Khoury is also an accomplished screenwriter. As you read this book, you can "watch" the film play out in your mind's eye. But that's where the similarity ends. In between the scenes of a rapidly unfolding crime story set in modern day Manhatten, Khoury's book seemlessly creates the time and space to dig deeper. In it, Khoury locks on to the enigmatic legend of the Templars with an historian's precision. He then meticulously peels away the layers in a way that the other book cannot. In The Last Templar, Khoury strives to engage and educate the reader - to welcome them in to a personal passion, about which he has clearly done his homework. But he does so without pontificating an agenda. Instead, he lets the reader in on a great secret, and asks the reader to draw his own conclusions. I very much enjoyed this first novel of Khoury's, and I look forward to the next.
Right off, it's just the action and some cleverness in constructing a twisting plot that earned this book 2 stars. But that goodness is really the exception.
This book is a lamentable mess.
First, Khoury ought to stick to screenplays. Much of the writing is reminiscent of a novelization of an action movie, and some of that done well. But much of it doesn't work for a novel.
When you write a movie, a few coincidences thrown at you over a couple hours are okay, because you have to catapult your way to the end in that short time. But if a helicopter, ship, huge storm, piece of rebar, or whatever, is at hand in a novel, there better be a dang good reason for it being there. Stuff just shows up in this novel. I won't spoil where or how, but if you bother to read this mess, you'll see it.
Khoury also goes on horrid flights of exposition and tries to wedge it in conversation. Nobody even remotely talks like this, unless it's in a college lecture room.
The saddest part is he seems to take a great joy in dismantling the faith of one of the protagonists. Really, the book is a stilted excuse to carry on a rancid anti-Christian screed. If you get well into the book, and you need to get it done, you can simply skip chapters 66 through 71 and remember these words: Khoury thinks Christianity is all based on a lie, and the FBI agent gets on a helicopter with the monsignor.
I just saved you 30 minutes.
Khoury also gets Dan Brown disease when he pretends that it's credible enough for fiction to call some of his ideas "accepted facts." It's okay to make up facts for a fiction story, but when you're trying to base a story on historical speculation and fact, you've got to make it a little bit sensible.... If you don't, and someone who actually knows something about what you're writing reads it, you'll lose the reader completely.
Khoury comes off as a semi-educated, poorly informed conspiracy nut when he starts in on his version of church history. He rattles off "facts" regarding the development of the New Testament that are provably false, not just differences in speculation among scholars, but simply wrong, from the gospels to the Council of Nice.
Heck, he even kills astronaut James Irwin nine years early and quite incorrectly.
I'll let you find that one for yourself.
Okay, Khoury hates Christians and Christianity, and especially the Catholic Church. His characterization of what he takes as a "faithful follower" of Catholicism is pathetic and ill-informed. His anti-Christian screed, as mentioned above, is far more inept than others I have seen on the Internet and Usenet. I think he tried to find a way to respect those of faith who might read his book, but it comes off horribly condescending, and not in a way you might expect in an academic setting. It is more like the boor we all know who isn't smart enough to realize what he doesn't know, thinks he knows everything, and is surprised when thinking people around him show him the disdain he's earned, so he chalks it up to a need to grow up and get up to his level.
Truly, Khoury ought to go find Dan Brown and kiss his feet, because without the DaVinci Code, this tripe would never have been published.Read more ›
