Reading & Listening

I'll confess, I'm all over any book that has to do with discovering what happened to the mysterious treasure of The Knights Templar. After all, I've wanted to personally discover that treasure since I was about nine years old.

Unfortunately, that hasn't happened yet so it was with pleasure that I picked up a copy of Steve Berry's 2006 novel, The Templar Legacy.

The book has action,intrigue and a main character named "Cotton". (Who names their child that?!?)

Anyway, I wish the book would have just stuck to treasure hunting because it got waaay too Da Vinci Code on me. I didn't need for the treasure to be some secret about the Bible that proves that Jesus didn't do something we all think he did.

Along the way to finding out this major secret, some rogue, CIA agent type Templar monks try to kill each other. At times, their dialogue is so catty and fraught with sexual tension that found myself wondering if what they really needed to discover is the secret of having a wife.

Seriously, Steve Berry should have left all the theological philosophising to someone else and stuck to solving clues in order to find bars of gold and caskets of diamonds. When he does just that, the book shines. However, by the time Cotton and company find the "treasure", I felt like I'd just sat through a really bad "Lost Books of the Bible" Dateline NBC special. It's not a book I'll pick up again for the pleasure of rereading.

This reader gives The Templar Legacy a C+.