Reading this in 2023 made me realize how dated it is.

The NYT blurb says, "Like the Da Vinci Code, Khoury's novel features age-old mysteries that play out in a modern setting." Templar does differ from Brown's work insofar as it tries to avoid the trappings of made-up symbology and ridiculous connect-the-dots solutions of convenience. Does it succeed? No. No, it does not.

The writing is okay. Khoury tends to use the same word in short spans of time, and it's jarring. I didn't bother to mark any, but a good example would be:

Regardless of what he thought, she couldn't pass up the opportunity. Maybe he would come find her if the opportunity presented itself. It would be risky for him to do so, but she was sure he would join her regardless of the obstacles in his way.

And, of course, there are sparkling gems of sentences like this one: "Vance's words hung over them like the blade of a guillotine." Had he just threatened their lives? Taken a hostage and threatened to shoot them? Told them he would toss a really expensive Rolex over the side of a building? Swore he would expose their dark secrets if they didn't help him? Nope - he had just called Christianity a fairy tale. He did say it in an angry voice, though.

Witten in 2005, the book leaned heavily into the security measures in place after 9/11. Not that it in any way prevented the FBI agent from just magically having all the right paperwork at his disposal to get into what country he needed to at a moment's notice, on any plane he wanted to. Even once boarding was closed. Even though he wasn't any kind of ranking officer.

The references to the internet made me chuckle, and I don't know if they're forgivable even for 2005. "She pulled up the most powerful meta-data search engine she had"...seriously? I was around for the internet to become a thing, and I don't ever recall referring to a search engine like that. For what it's worth, we find out later it's Google.

I can deal with a fair bit of Templar shenanigans, and there was at least an attempt to make it sound scholarly. I appreciate that the female MC was an archeologist and frequently chucked the FBI agent to the side to do her own thing. Obviously, he protested, and she always ended up needing to be saved in the long run, anyway. So my appreciation is somewhat limited.

Despite my ability to suspend my disbelief in the Templar stuff, the medical stuff was completely implausible.

It’s a fast read, reasonably written, and I did enjoy the twist at the end.

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Created Feb 29, 2024 at 7:13pm • Submit your own review...