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THE TESTAMENT
BY ERIC VAN LUSTBADER
Review by Diana Bane
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Lustbader has been writing savvy international political thrillers
for about twenty years, and with this book injects a religious
element to his proven, fast-paced formula. One assumes this is
to attract the many readers who put Da Vinci Code over the top,
and his publishers have obviously allocated a marketing budget
to reflect their desire to cash in on the trend.
The author has done his homework in that regard, as referenced
in the two page Author Note at the end of the book. Unfortunately,
being faithful to historical fact isn’t enough to make a
novel work, and in this case the historical background is misleading
-- there is very little real exploration of religion here, historical
or contemporary; it‘s all surface, all mere trappings. The
plot hinges on a centuries-old conflict between the Gnostic Observantines
and the Knights of St. Clement, the former being the good guys
in the duality. These two groups are fictional, but the fictional
Observantines are based (the author tells us) on the real Order
of Franciscan Observantines, who had Christian Gnostic beliefs
and were disbanded by a 13th century pope for that reason. They
went underground instead, and have since -- fictionally anyway
-- been pursued by the Knights, making them opponents of the Catholic
Church. The Order (meaning the Gnostic Observantines) has in its
keeping certain items, notably a Testament written by Jesus himself,
and a healing elixir called The Quintessence, which could shake
up the Church; it is the mission of the Knights to seize these
things. The two groups, Order and Knights, have over the passage
of time become secularized (we are told), though together they
live and operate in a secret, underground world called the Voire
Dei. This setup is a contemporary conspiracy theorist’s dream.
Enter Bravo, aka Braverman Shaw, the hero, chosen heir and successor
to his father Dexter Shaw, member of The Order and Keeper of the
sacred stash. Dexter is assassinated in the opening pages before
he can impart his secrets to his son, and the chase is on. Bravo,
as new Keeper, must find the sacred stash in order to protect the
Testament and the Quintessence. Bravo has a Guardian, as Keepers
in the Order have always had, but his is a young woman named Jenny
Logan … with whom he is soon in love, of course; and of course
their path both to each other and to safety does not run smooth.
Lustbader knows how to pace, to keep those pages turning, and his
plotting, if convoluted, is so good that readers don’t have
time to worry much about lack of depth in his characters. The plot
is basically a chase and a quest as Bravo and Jenny pursue clues
that Dexter Shaw left in the form of ciphers, planted in various
locations, like a big, complicated treasure hunt. This part is
fun, as we go from the coast of Brittany -- including a scenic
side trip to Mont St. Michel -- to Venice, to Rome, to ancient
Trebizond on the east coast of the Black Sea. The Venice sections
are particularly enjoyable.
But the novel as a whole is an elaborate disappointment. There
are hints here and there, dropped like little nuggets into the
fast-moving stream of action, that the author might have made much
more of his underlying thematic material than turns out to be the
case. Nothing that happens quite illuminates Jenny’s statement
early on (page 109): "My faith [is] in what the Order represents:
a group of sane men working in an insane world for the betterment
of mankind." I thought the aforementioned little nuggets were
suggestive of the author’s deeper beliefs about our "insane
world", and that is what I would have like to seen explored
in some depth. For example, the assertion that we are approaching
the Age of the New Crusades, a time when Islamic Radicalism will
confront the Christian West. (Which may not be truly Christian,
thus adding more depth to the problems that are not explored.)
A book of this sort needs to come to a satisfying conclusion, after
the long, long chase. That does not happen in The Testament. I,
for one, felt cheated and let down. I know Eric Van Lustbader can
do better than this.
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