The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury (2006, Paperback, Reprint)

“The Last Templar” begins with a bang and ends with a whimper. This novel- like Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”- deals with a 13th century conspiracy between the Knights Templar and the Catholic Church, the CIA/FBI, a beautiful archeologist , well, you get the picture. Mr. Khoury is a screenwriter and the novel has a definite cinematic look and feel. His views of religious faith reflect the opinions of modern liberal Hollywood.

I could forgive the author for the rather silly and trite storyline but the characters are simply beyond belief. Tess, the heroine, is drop dead beautiful but a reckless, silly, superficial airhead. In pursuit of ambition, her young daughter Kim is all but forgotten as is common sense and decency. Then there’s FBI agent Reilly who is ready to cast a lifetime of faith aside after a 10 minute discussion with Tess and Vance. Clearly there are male airheads as well. And of course one of the especially nasty characters is a Catholic.

I realize that Mr. Khoury is a writer, not a theologian, but surely a 15 page rant (which begins in chapter 67) about the evils of Christianity is a bit much. And the arguments are the same old silly comments we’ve heard for a thousand years: “Everything Christians believe in … is all made up”; “Jesus was just a roving wise man…”; Christianity has “definitely passed it’s sell-by date,” etc. Add to this that Mr. Khoury’s Biblical timeframes are totally out of sync with Bible scholars and archeological discoveries, and ask yourself if you really want to waste your time on this one.