The Last Templar
 | |
| Author | Raymond Khoury |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Suspense, Mystery novel |
| Publisher | originally by Ziji Publishing paperback by Orion Books |
Publication date | 2005 |
Published in English | 2005 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback Hardcover) |
| Pages | 524,½ pages |
| ISBN | 0-7528-7968-5 |
| OCLC | 173077978 |
The Last Templar is a 2005 novel by Raymond Khoury, and also is his debut work. The novel was on the New York Times Bestseller list for 22 months.[1]
Back story
In AD 1291, following the fall of Acre, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem to the Saracens, a small party of Knights Templar leave the city with a small chest. Their ship, the Falcon Temple, is damaged in a storm at sea and sinks. One of the Knights is mortally wounded in the event; he dies on land after hiding a small leather pouch under a gravestone. He charges the remainder of the ship's company to deliver an encoded letter to the Head of the Templars.
The last surviving Knight reaches Paris in 1314, just in time to see the Grand Master being burned at the stake after refusing to reveal the location of the Templars' treasure. The last Knight commits himself to maintaining the legend of the Templars' threat to the Catholic Church.
Characters
Martin of Carmaux
Martin is in the secondary plot of the story and is a Templar. After his mentor Aimard dies he is to take a message to the Grand Master, but after many perils he is captured in Tuscany and forced into slavery for years before returning to France.
Tess Chaykin
Tess is an archaeologist and was in the museum when it was attacked. She is a main part in discovering where the pouch is and after she befriends Reilly they go together to Turkey to find the pouch.
Sean Reilly
Reilly is an FBI agent who is assigned the case of the museum attack. After capturing Gus and finding the other two people who attacked the museum dead he befriends Tess. He is of Catholic beliefs.
Gus Waldron, Branko Petrovic, Mitch Adeson
These are the three men who with Vance attacked the museum and took the multigeared rotor encoder. The three are killed by a man named Plunkett who is a henchman of De Angelis, who hunts them down and kills each in a different way.
Bill Vance
Vance is the main antagonist and raids the museum and takes the device. His motives are to release to the world of Christianity that their beliefs are false; he believes that this will be the end of the religion. He wants to do this because a priest advised him and his wife against aborting a high-risk pregnancy. This resulted in the deaths of Vance's wife and unborn daughter. Vance dies after he falls from a ledge reaching for the Gospel.
Monsignor De Angelis
De Angelis is a monsignore working for the Vatican. He is behind the killing of the three raiders and sinks the boat Tess was on to prevent the recovery of the figurehead containing the Templars' chest. He also received training and orders from the CIA.
Adaptations
Graphic novel
The French graphic novel publisher Dargaud is releasing a graphic novel adaptation, initially in French. The script adaptation and illustration are by the artist Miguel Lalor.[2] The work will be released in four volumes.
- Le dernier Templier, Tome 1 : L'encodeur [Album], Raymond Khoury (Auteur), Miguel Lalor (Auteur), Dargaud - (13 mars 2009) ISBN 978-2-205-06060-7
- Le dernier Templier, Tome 2 : Le chevalier de la crypte [Album], Raymond Khoury (Auteur), Miguel Lalor (Auteur), Daniel Oliveira (Auteur), Thorn (Avec la contribution de), Dargaud (25 février 2010) ISBN 978-2-205-06305-9
TV miniseries
NBC made a two-part television miniseries starring Mira Sorvino, Scott Foley, Victor Garber, and Omar Sharif. It aired over two successive nights: Sunday, January 25 and Monday, January 26, 2009. It re-aired Sunday, May 31 and Sunday, June 7, 2009. The TV miniseries The Last Templar was criticized in Turkey by the media for misrepresenting the geography of Turkey.[3]
The movie is very different than a book. Thus, in movie, Tess pursuing the Met's "Templars" on a police horse; in the book she was hiding with everyone else. Gus is depicted as a crook who was trying to solicit an antiquarian's help to sell the relict he stole at the Met; in the movie this line is omitted. Vance was shooting Tess at the cemetery (with a paralyze gun) and, literally, kidnapped her to his dungeon, while in the movie he is presented as Tess' friend. The role of Tess's daughter, Kim, is left to a minimum in the book, while in the movie she is helping her mom to solve a clue on old Arab town's location. The name of the "Turkish" town recorded by Al-Idrisi is different, and in the book it is underwater (as a result of a nearby dam's work). Reilly is taken to Vatican where he was compelled to help in finding Tess and Vance; in the book they all and De Angelis on the same boat. Generally there are much more differences then similarities between the book and TV-miniseries.
Sequel
A sequel to the novel, The Templar Salvation, was published in 2010.
References
External links
- The Last Templar - the book's website