I finished a work of fiction last night entitled “The Last Templar”.  I had been eyeing this book for a good while.  I had seen it at Barnes & Noble when it came out in hardback and was intrigued.  I wondered to myself if it was a Dan Brown knock off?  Well, while awaiting a Chocolate-Banana Vivanno at a Starbucks inside a Farm Fresh, I saw the paperback version and indulged in the $6.50 book. 

I have been reading on it off and on for about a month and a half and finished it last night.  The plot was interesting, but predictable.  It generally followed the tone of constant urgency to solve the mystery before the protagonists.  There is a romance sub-plot, a shocking revelation that could bring down Chrisendom, and a hell-bent Vatican official trying to cover it all up.  In the end, the protagonists (and the reader) find out the secret that Templars discovered during their nine years of seclusion under Al-Asqa Mosque in the legendary King Solomon’s Stables, but the evidence of that secret which could destroy the Christian Mythos are destroyed in the end.

It differed from Mr. Brown’s Langdon series by making the female character the brainy protagonist and the male the one dealing with a conflict of faith.  It also has two enemies rather than just a Church bashing book.  While an agent of the Vatican is dispatched by a Cardinal to suppress the secret, there is also a fallen man from academia who has lost all scruples and is unwavering in his wish to bring down the Church.  It was interesting to me that the author chose to also cast an appraising eye over the world of academia.  I liked the fact that not only was the concept of faith without questioning explored, but also questioning without faith.

I think we all question, but faith is what can be a rock in our lives.  Is the story of Jesus Christ partly historic and partly mythical?  As my father would say, “I wasn’t holding the light,”  so I couldn’t tell you.  I, personally, believe in this myth as history.  Do I have proof that everything happened exactly as it is stated in the canonical gospels?  No, but faith is the belief in something that you don’t have proof of.  I think the strongest thing in the gospels are a small figure in history facing down his contemporaries with a philosophy of brotherly love throughout the human race.  A message that the Templars’ last adherants passed to early Scottish Freemasons.  I’m proud to continue in that message of mutual respect and love for the different Semitic Cultures and all mankind really.

Read the book.  It is pretty fast and it will make you think.  I give it a “Decent” in my ledger.