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Literary Review
THRILLER
A rattling good yarn
S. RAMACHANDER
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Bourne’s book is a gripping page-turner but it is difficult to sustain over 500 pages.
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The Last Testament; Sam Bourne, Harper UK, £6.99.
Jerusalem and its environs is a favourite setting for both biography and best-selling fiction in our times. A recently reviewed book, The Prisoners, was a first-person account of this time and place by an award-winning American jou
rnalist. Its very antiquity and cosmopolitan origins are seemingly the greatest threats to present day peace in this cradle of ancient civilisations.
Sam Bourne, in real life Jonathan Freedland, a successful British journalist, has written this book around the discovery of an ancient clay tablet looted by the rampaging mob from the famous Baghdad Museum of Antiquities — a real life event. He considers this to be a historic event that could have many ripples.
Imaginary fallouts
He conjures up a rattling good yarn out of the imaginary fall-outs from a stolen antique that purports to be the last will and testament of a unique religious figure, common to Jews, Muslims and Christians. (Telling you the name would spoil the fun!)
The stolen antique tablet tells a very different tale from the hitherto accepted version of history in the region. Though set in a time near the present, when the two parties are about to shake hands over a peace agreement, this paperback is one more in the religious conspiracy-thriller category, and has already been compared to Dan Brown’s The Da Vince Code.
The source of the story come from the terrible consequences of two rival archaeological discoveries by both sides, aimed at proving who the original natives are and therefore whom the land really belongs to, an issue that is as alive today as ever before.
The prevailing view of course changes, depending on who the digger happens to be. In this competition to claim rightful ownership of the birthplace, violence escalates and apparently random killings occur, which makes the task of any peace maker almost impossible and even dangerous.
Shimon Guttman and Ahmed Nour are both after the same truth and both die under suspicious circumstances. Did they actually confer, through secret code across the racial and religious divide? If so did they reach similar conclusions as to the proof?
Only a sleuth can discover this truth. Guttman’s killing is followed by the apparent suicide of Guttman’s wife and then an innocent trader of the Arab quarter of the holy city.
Suspicion and deaths
With both the warring sides divided into factions, some more militant than others, there is even suspicion that the killings are engineered only to rock the so-called peace process, an American initiative which has only mixed reactions everywhere.
An unlikely heroine to enter this scenario is Maggie Castello, a young American of Irish descent, who had chosen to retire along with her partner into obscurity in Washington D.C., nursing the wounds of a rough passage through Africa earlier, where she had committed a terrible mistake in her personal relationships that damaged the negotiations permanently.
The guilt weighs heavily on her and meanwhile she finds her relationship with colleague Edward too suffocating. Just then the U.S. government sends a professional arm-twister after her to persuade her not so gently to return to the negotiating table.
Twists and turns
Maggie is that rare professional, a career-negotiator. It would be, to many, an unusual and little-understood occupation, which requires one to be distanced from the diplomat, the politician and the intelligence services, all three of whom are the more familiar protagonists of the genre of espionage and political thriller.
As the story proceeds through the usual (but not predictable) twists and turns, Maggie is faced with a succession of set backs and threats to her mission and to her life, as she works with Uri, the son of the dead archaeologist.
Meanwhile the Deputy Secretary and his team are chasing her, pointing out that, contrary to the normal ways of politicians, the American president sees here an opportunity to do some good and also make some political capital out of it for. We are taken behind the scenes to the world of the dealers and auctioneers and illegal traders in ancient artefacts and treasures — and the ruthlessness and cynicism that surrounds it.
Bourne’s book is full of realistic atmosphere and gripping in style, written in a page-turner mode, yet it is still difficult to sustain over 500 pages.
Whatever happened to the 250-page thrillers from Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie, and other masters, that one actually managed to finish on a rainy Saturday or on a single train journey?
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