<p>The Templar <br />Salvation<br />Raymond Khoury<br />Hachette<br />2011, pp 470<br />RS 499<br /><br /></p>.<p>If you’re feeling a bit low on adrenaline, this novel is what you need. There is high drama starting from page one, with medieval knights cutting each other down limb by limb, as they fight over an ancient secret. In a parallel modern plot, bomb-laden cars dot the streets of the Vatican, with archaeological scholars crammed into their trunks. The Templar secrets are about to resurface again, as a weapon of sorts, in some heavy-duty <br />international terrorist action.<br /><br />American FBI agent Sean Reilly, whose job description goes something like “running down guys who get wet dreams about slamming planes into <br />towers”, has to save the world again, (for, this is a sequel to a previous adventure). Or rather, he must protect the secrets of the western civilisation from falling into the hands of a bad guy by the name of Mansoor Zahed, who is apparently an Iranian dirty tricks’ expert operating in cahoots with a white South African mercenary. (A footnote: KGB and the Cold War having signed off from the world of thriller publishing, various middle eastern agencies seem to be taking over their role of the bogeyman ‘other’ in the world of spy fiction.)<br /><br />Reilly lacks brains but compensates for it with a lot of muscle, and is almost unstoppable. The brains belong to his sidekick, Tess Chaykin, ex-archaeological scholar and (ironically) currently a writer of historical conspiracy thrillers. She is kidnapped in order to force Reilly to assist in a robbery at the Vatican, to gain access to the top-secret Templar archives.<br /><br />To do so, Reilly must hijack one of the ‘Pope-mobiles’, the bulletproof aquarium-type car that the Pope uses when moving among devotees, and even fight some of his own colleagues in the Italian police. “Reilly raised his hands defensively with a sheepish half grin — “Prego, signore” — then decides that this would take too long. So, he just sucker punches the cop in the gut and follows it through with another to the jaw.”<br /><br />Before we have time to blink, he rescues the scholar-writer, hops into bed with her umpteen times, and then takes off to Turkey, where the larger part of the plot is set. In Istanbul, a complex car chase ends with Reilly having to dive into the Golden Horn to save a bus load of civilians about to drown as collateral damage.<br /><br />Soon, we’re whizzing away to the picturesque and touristy Cappadocia, an ancient and mysterious landscape which is perfect for potent adventures. Hence, The Templar Salvation can also be read as a kind of travel guide (with short descriptive passages about tourist sights along the way) enlivened by shoot-outs on every other page. Apart from his marksmanship and meaty fists, Reilly also commands surveillance drones and other hi-tech James Bond-type of gadgetry, which makes the hunt quite amusing.<br /><br />We’re about one third into the plot now, and I have to stop here to catch my breath and gather my wits. There is, we have begun to figure out, a mysterious historical conspiracy somewhere in the background: a 1,000-year stand-off between the Popes of the Vatican and the Knights Templar. <br /><br />Sounds a bit like Dan Brown? If so, then The Templar Salvation is a hardboiled, testosterone-brimming, machine-gun version of The Da Vinci Code, without any pseudo-intellectual museum curators and code-breakers — the guys in this novel shoot from the hip and their bullets smash through any brain that comes in their way. Except for Tess Chaykin’s, luckily. <br />While the Christian and Muslim agent fight it out, Tess unravels the back-story, revolving around the aforementioned medieval knights who salvaged boxes full of secret codices out of Constantinople, while the city was being sacked in 1203. Throughout, there are rather amusing (if somewhat unconvincing) historical flashbacks, depicting a flourishing trade in religious souvenirs. The mother-of-all-religious-souvenirs, which forms the core of this novel, dates all the way back to 325 AD and Nicaea, but I shall not reveal anything more, except to say that although this is very ‘Dan Brown-ish’, the author does grapple, interestingly, with how religions try to adjust to real politik and modern circumstances.<br /><br />At times, Khoury gets his facts a little wrong, revealing that his research is more functional than serious. For example, the ancient crusader stronghold Antiochia is not in Syria, but in Turkey, and is called Antakya today — an unfortunate mistake if one is purporting to write a historical mystery thriller. My main bone to pick with this kind of action-fiction, however, is how clunky the prose is, written as if the author is tone deaf. Frequent infelicities and jarring words litter the pages. With all those explosions going off in one’s imagination, perhaps one can argue that there is no need for verbal elegance. But in the end, I am left with the feeling that the pulp writers of yesteryear had a sense of language that pulp writers today completely lack.</p>
<p>The Templar <br />Salvation<br />Raymond Khoury<br />Hachette<br />2011, pp 470<br />RS 499<br /><br /></p>.<p>If you’re feeling a bit low on adrenaline, this novel is what you need. There is high drama starting from page one, with medieval knights cutting each other down limb by limb, as they fight over an ancient secret. In a parallel modern plot, bomb-laden cars dot the streets of the Vatican, with archaeological scholars crammed into their trunks. The Templar secrets are about to resurface again, as a weapon of sorts, in some heavy-duty <br />international terrorist action.<br /><br />American FBI agent Sean Reilly, whose job description goes something like “running down guys who get wet dreams about slamming planes into <br />towers”, has to save the world again, (for, this is a sequel to a previous adventure). Or rather, he must protect the secrets of the western civilisation from falling into the hands of a bad guy by the name of Mansoor Zahed, who is apparently an Iranian dirty tricks’ expert operating in cahoots with a white South African mercenary. (A footnote: KGB and the Cold War having signed off from the world of thriller publishing, various middle eastern agencies seem to be taking over their role of the bogeyman ‘other’ in the world of spy fiction.)<br /><br />Reilly lacks brains but compensates for it with a lot of muscle, and is almost unstoppable. The brains belong to his sidekick, Tess Chaykin, ex-archaeological scholar and (ironically) currently a writer of historical conspiracy thrillers. She is kidnapped in order to force Reilly to assist in a robbery at the Vatican, to gain access to the top-secret Templar archives.<br /><br />To do so, Reilly must hijack one of the ‘Pope-mobiles’, the bulletproof aquarium-type car that the Pope uses when moving among devotees, and even fight some of his own colleagues in the Italian police. “Reilly raised his hands defensively with a sheepish half grin — “Prego, signore” — then decides that this would take too long. So, he just sucker punches the cop in the gut and follows it through with another to the jaw.”<br /><br />Before we have time to blink, he rescues the scholar-writer, hops into bed with her umpteen times, and then takes off to Turkey, where the larger part of the plot is set. In Istanbul, a complex car chase ends with Reilly having to dive into the Golden Horn to save a bus load of civilians about to drown as collateral damage.<br /><br />Soon, we’re whizzing away to the picturesque and touristy Cappadocia, an ancient and mysterious landscape which is perfect for potent adventures. Hence, The Templar Salvation can also be read as a kind of travel guide (with short descriptive passages about tourist sights along the way) enlivened by shoot-outs on every other page. Apart from his marksmanship and meaty fists, Reilly also commands surveillance drones and other hi-tech James Bond-type of gadgetry, which makes the hunt quite amusing.<br /><br />We’re about one third into the plot now, and I have to stop here to catch my breath and gather my wits. There is, we have begun to figure out, a mysterious historical conspiracy somewhere in the background: a 1,000-year stand-off between the Popes of the Vatican and the Knights Templar. <br /><br />Sounds a bit like Dan Brown? If so, then The Templar Salvation is a hardboiled, testosterone-brimming, machine-gun version of The Da Vinci Code, without any pseudo-intellectual museum curators and code-breakers — the guys in this novel shoot from the hip and their bullets smash through any brain that comes in their way. Except for Tess Chaykin’s, luckily. <br />While the Christian and Muslim agent fight it out, Tess unravels the back-story, revolving around the aforementioned medieval knights who salvaged boxes full of secret codices out of Constantinople, while the city was being sacked in 1203. Throughout, there are rather amusing (if somewhat unconvincing) historical flashbacks, depicting a flourishing trade in religious souvenirs. The mother-of-all-religious-souvenirs, which forms the core of this novel, dates all the way back to 325 AD and Nicaea, but I shall not reveal anything more, except to say that although this is very ‘Dan Brown-ish’, the author does grapple, interestingly, with how religions try to adjust to real politik and modern circumstances.<br /><br />At times, Khoury gets his facts a little wrong, revealing that his research is more functional than serious. For example, the ancient crusader stronghold Antiochia is not in Syria, but in Turkey, and is called Antakya today — an unfortunate mistake if one is purporting to write a historical mystery thriller. My main bone to pick with this kind of action-fiction, however, is how clunky the prose is, written as if the author is tone deaf. Frequent infelicities and jarring words litter the pages. With all those explosions going off in one’s imagination, perhaps one can argue that there is no need for verbal elegance. But in the end, I am left with the feeling that the pulp writers of yesteryear had a sense of language that pulp writers today completely lack.</p>
