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Paris 1308. The grand master of the Knights Templar is tortured and killed by the Dominican grand inquisitor of France under orders from Philip IV. Despite this treatment, he does not reveal the desired information. The Templars existed for only a couple of hundred years, protecting pilgrims to the Holy Land from infidel attacks. During that relatively short time, it is believed that the order accumulated great wealth as well as secrets that could shake the complacency of organized religion. Copenhagen, today. Cotton Malone, retired Department of Justice operative, is now running a rare bookshop. He sees his ex boss, Stephanie Nelle, just as her purse is being snatched. He chases the culprit into a tower with only one way out. The man jumps to his death, while Stephanie picks up her purse and disappears into the crowd. Stephanie is a widow whose husband Lars committed suicide. They had been estranged for years, Lars working in France trying to find the Templars' lost legacy. He had written several popular books in order to be able to raise money for his serious research. He was found hanging from a local bridge, but Nelle is not sure it was suicide. Then her son was lost in an avalanche. Someone has sent her some pages from Lars' notebook. She wants to try to find the rest of it to prove that he was not a charlatan and that he was murdered by a group trying to preserve the identity of Christ, whom Lars believed was a construct and never really did exist. The shroud of Turin after all, only dates from medieval times and was the sort of fabric in which the last Templar would have been wrapped. The story moves along, just as did THE AMBER ROOM, the only other one of Berry's books I have read. If you, like me, love to find stories that take some of the complacency out of organized religion, then try THE TEMPLAR LEGACY. Apparently, Cotton Malone will appear in at least three more books. This reader, for one, will be on the lookout for them.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, December 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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