The Last Templar (Sean Reilly and Tess Chaykin Series #1)

by Raymond Khoury

Overview

"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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101158555
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/19/2006
Series:	Sean Reilly and Tess Chaykin Series , #1
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	26,510
File size:	816 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Raymond Khoury is the bestselling author of The Last Templar and The Sanctuary. An acclaimed screenwriter and producer for both television and film, he lives in London with his family.

Introduction

1. How did you go from a career in architecture and real estate development to writing?
The short answer is: purely by accident.
When I came to Europe in the mid-80s, architects were going through exceptionally hard times. I tried it for a few months and quickly realized I'd have to do something else if I wanted to live here. I was in my early 20s and investment bankers were having a ball, and it seemed like a cool thing to do, so I did a quick MBA before joining a French investment bank that was headquartered in London.

The money was great, but the work wasn't. I did it for three years before deciding I had to get out before the bonuses got too big to turn down. I eventually ended up trying to combine my architecture background with my newly acquired financial skills and working in real estate development - which, bizarrely, led to writing - on a beach in the Bahamas. A real estate developer friend of mine from Manhattan had asked me to be part of a project he was putting together there, along with two Wall Street bankers who he'd also invited there as backers. Over dinner one night, one of the bankers mentioned how he was investing in developing screenplays for Hollywood, using a couple of writers he knew there - more as a hobby than a serious investment. I jokingly told him of an idea of mine which I'd always thought would make a fun movie. He loved the idea and suggested we develop it together by hiring one of his writers.

We had several conference calls with a screenwriter in L.A., but when the first outline was faxed to me, it was very different to what I had in mind. I told them both I'd put my thoughts on paper, in the hope of making things clearer. When I faxed the pages through, my partner in New York called me and said the screenwriter wasn't going to write the screenplay anymore: I was. "You're a writer," he said. "Just sit down and write the damn thing. You can do it." Which I did. And that screenplay got me nominated for a Fulbright Fellowship in Screenwriting, which gave me the confidence to try writing another one: "The Last Templar." In 1996, helpful friends and fortuitous events soon led to my finding myself sitting in the office of one of the biggest publishers in New York who thought my story would make a bestselling novel. Things didn't quite work out at that time. However, an agent I'd signed up with a few years later read the screenplay and loved it, insisting I should still write it as a novel. She would call me up every few months, asking if I'd started. And in the autumn of 2002, I finished a long commitment to a screenwriting project and decided I was ready to do it. For myself. For the readership I had in mind. And tell the story I wanted to tell.

2. In The Last Templar several characters have strong feelings about organized religion. What are you trying to get across about religion?
I've always found it shocking that, in this day and age, a massively significant amount of people all over the planet can behave in the most amoral and savage way towards others, all because they hang on every word of religious documents that were written thousands of years ago, at a time when the world was a very, very different place.

It seems to me that the world is, sadly, reverting to a more primitive state where religion is being perverted and turned into a great divider of people, which, ironically, one could say was the original intent of the founders of these movements: to create a unifying force in order to overturn a pre-existing belief system that's been abused and turned into an oppressive force.

In "The Last Templar", I've tried to explore the history of one of the planet's big religions, in an effort to lay out the often overlooked origin of the Catholic Church and perhaps inspire a broader curiosity about other religions and how they came to be.

3. What attracted you to the Knights Templar?
I was introduced to the Templars by a friend who knew a lot about their history and thought I should use them as the basis of my next work. As I began researching them, I was fascinated by the wealth of material about them, and by the myths and legends they inspired. The Templars' missing treasure was one of the great hooks of history, and as I got deeper into my story, it became clear that this premise presented the opportunity to do much more than just write a conventional thriller: it allowed me to present some widely overlooked, but historically accurate and possibly unsettling information relating to the early days of the Church, and in particular, how the Bible was actually put together; and by opening that door, it allowed the characters in the story, and by extension, its readers, to explore their own faith - or lack of it - and, consequently, the effects - good or bad - of organized religion on the world today, which may not be a bad thing at a time when spirituality is being polarized across the planet.

4. Is there anything in the Templars' real history that corresponds to the object or 'treasure' desperately sought by the characters in your book?
What is widely accepted is this: that the Templars did spend many years cloistered in the huge quarters they were given, which stood on the remains of King Solomon's temple, when they were supposed to be escorting the pilgrims from the ports of the holy land to Jerusalem; and that their great wealth, their treasure, was never recovered.

5. Why do you think ancient secret societies are such a hot topic?
I think there's a general yearning for something more fulfilling spiritually, and part of that search is manifested through exploring the hidden secrets of our past.

6. It sounds like you've lived all over the world. Where are you from, and how has exposure to various locations influenced your writing?
I was born and grew up in Beirut, Lebanon until my early teens, when the civil war there erupted and my parents and I moved to Rye, New York, where I went to high school. By the time I graduated from Rye, the fighting in Beirut was calming down and although my brother and sister preferred to stay in the US, my parents needed to go back for my father's work and I chose to go back with them. I studied architecture at the American University of Beirut, living through six years of intermittent civil war which were amazingly intense, emotionally taxing, and, oddly, utterly riveting. The situation there deteriorated again very badly towards the end of 1983 after the Marines compound at the airport, and it was time leave again, this time for good. We spent a week huddled in the underground parking of our building before being evacuated from the beach on a Chinook.

Living in New York in the mid-70s was a phenomenally enriching time for me which continues to influence my writing. At school, I had some wonderful English lit and creative writing teachers who introduced to the work of Ayn Rand, Dashiell Hammett and SJ Perelman. New York City was very different from European cities I knew, it had an amazing energy and range, its own pace, its own sounds and smells. I try and spend as much time as I can there, and when I'm not there, have to make do with using it as a setting for my writing.

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Fans of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code who are searching for another outstanding historical thriller need look no further than Raymond Khoury's spectacular debut novel about the Order of the Templar Knights, their hidden history and agenda, and a civilization-altering secret that has survived seven centuries.

When four horsemen clad in shining armor and wearing the insignia of the Templar Knights pillage the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the opening of a "Treasures of the Vatican" event and disappear with priceless artifacts, adventure-seeking archeologist Tess Chaykin and FBI agent Sean Reilly become embroiled in a mystery that, if confirmed, could turn the Christian community upside down and irrevocably change the religious landscape. One of the artifacts stolen was an unremarkable cryptographic device, but the device leads to the decoding of an ancient manuscript written by one of the last Templar Knights, which in turn leads to a secret submerged somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea -- a secret that, if uncovered, could transform humanity forever…

An insanely fast paced thriller that includes breathtaking twists and jaw-dropping bombshells on practically every page, Khoury's conspiracy-laden debut -- a blend of historical fiction, suspense, romance, and wild religious speculation -- will open up a can of existential worms that will be all but impossible to close. Like the compelling dialogue between atheist Chaykin and the devotedly Catholic Reilly concerning faith versus science, the highly volatile subject matter discussed within The Last Templar will spark endless hours of heated debate -- and the conclusion (oh, the brilliant conclusion!) will leave readers absolutely dumbstruck. Veritas vos liberabit: The truth will set you free. Paul Goat Allen

bn.com

The war between the Catholic Church and the Gnostic insurgency drags on in this ponderous Da Vinci Code knockoff. The latest skirmish erupts when horsemen dressed as knights raid New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, lopping off heads and firing Uzis as they go. Their trail leads FBI agent Sean Ryan and fetching archeologist Tess Chaykin to the medieval crusading order of the Knights Templars. Anachronistic Gnostic champions of feminism and tolerance against Roman hierarchy and obscurantism, the Templars, they learn, discovered proof that Catholic dogma is a "hoax" and were planning to use it to unite all religions under a rationalist creed that would usher in world peace. Screenwriter and first-time novelist Khoury spices up the doctrinal revisionism with Da Vinci-style thriller flourishes, including secret codes, gratuitous but workmanlike action scenes and a priest-hit man sent out by the Vatican to kill anyone who knows anything. The narrative pauses periodically for believers-vs.-agnostics debates and tutorials on everything from the Gospel of Thomas to alchemy. Though long-winded and sophomoric, these seminars are a relief from Tess and Sean's tedious romance, which proceeds from awkward flirtations as they listen to Sean's mix CD to hackneyed intimacies about childhood traumas. 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. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

With "Templar" in the title, this debut novel will inevitably draw comparisons to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Set in post-9/11 New York City, the action begins with a daring raid on the Metropolitan Museum of Art by four horsemen during the gala opening of an exhibition of Vatican treasures. When one of the witnesses to the crime, archaeologist Tess Chaykin, recognizes that the bandits masqueraded as Knights Templar, Chaykin and FBI agent Sean Reilly become involved in an intrigue whose roots date back to the 1291 fall of Jerusalem. Among the artifacts stolen from the museum is a rare rotor encoder. What will it decode? Can Chaykin and Reilly authenticate certain Templar assertions? How far will the Vatican go to protect the faithful? Khoury proffers a unique Templar secret and a subsequent Vatican cover-up that, if revealed, would change Christendom forever. For those fatigued by the recent spate of Mary Magdalene/Holy Grail books, this novel will come as a welcome relief. Recommended for most popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/05; also coming in February is Steve Berry's The Templar Legacy from Ballantine.-Ed.]-Laura A.B. Cifelli, Fort Myers-Lee Cty. P.L., FL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Keep the code, scratch da Vinci. It's 1291, and in Jerusalem, the Knights of the Templar-long allied to the established church-are taking a pasting from the Saracens. The Grand Master Templar, seeing the handwriting on the wall, summons trusted aides, and places in their care an unassuming little item containing metaphoric dynamite. Flash forward 700-plus years to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's the fancy opening of a special exhibit: Treasures of the Vatican. Crashing the event are four marauders on horseback, wearing iron clothing and masquerading as Knights of the Templar. They gallop up the steps of the Met clearly intent on larceny-of a particular kind, it turns out, when they ignore the sumptuous array of glittering prizes in favor of a gadget described in the catalogue as a "multigeared rotor encoder." Lovely, feisty Tess Chaykin, an archaeologist, is witness to the curious events. Her interest changes from mild to near-obsessive as she continues to ponder implications: If an encoder is so urgently sought, she reasons, it follows that somewhere there's a really big-time code in need of breaking. Enter stalwart, semi-hunk FBI counter-terrorism expert Sean Reilly, who is equally struck. And more than a little struck by Tess as well. Now enter the bad guys-chief among them a rogue archaeologist with an unquenchable hate for organized religion, and his opposite number, a Catholic priest with ninja-type moves. The game's afoot, a humongous mystery needs to be solved, and at the center of it is a certain Jeshua of Nazareth, carpenter, who kept a meticulously detailed personal journal, and who may or may not have been "just a man."A mostly implausible first novel.

Kirkus Reviews