Last Secret of the Temple by Paul Sussman

From the Publisher

A pulse-pounding, roller coaster of an adventure.

When the body of hotel owner Jan Weiss is discovered at Malqata, an archeological site on the west bank of the Nile, it looks like a routine investigation for Inspector Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor police. But the more the detective finds out about Weiss, the more he is reminded of the brutal killing of an Israeli woman at Karnak years ago -- a murder for which he has always suspected the wrong man had been convicted. Despite opposition from his superiors and his own misgivings about working with the Israelis, Khalifa re-opens the case and teams up with hard-nosed Jerusalem detective Arieh Ben Roi.

At the same time journalist Eva Town receives an anonymous letter at her Jerusalem home. It requests her help in contacting “Al-Mulassam” (“The Veiled One”), a Palestinian extremist leader she has recently interviewed; in return it offers her the scoop of a lifetime.

Against a backdrop of escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians, Eva follows up the cryptic letter while Khalifa and Arieh slowly uncover the unpleasant truth about Jan Weiss. Their investigations intertwine as they all get further in to the web of duplicity and intrigue that has at its center an ancient artifact of such potent symbolism that it could plunge the Middle East into an all-out war.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Washington Post - Ross King

For those who enjoyed his first novel, The Lost Army of Cambyses, in which ancient mysteries mesh with front-page political events, The Last Secret of the Temple won't disappoint. The same up-to-the-minute headlines figure strongly in a novel that begins with the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70. Set against a background of suicide bombs and fragile peace negotiations, it marks a second outing for Yusuf Khalifa, Sussman's Egyptian police inspector…Sussman succeeds on the strength of his intelligence, empathy and sense of pace. The novel uses some stock materials—a plundered temple, a Crusader castle, a Nazi archaeologist, a lost treasure that must not fall into the wrong hands. But the story is propelled along by the strength of the protagonists, with Sussman blocking in plenty of background while neatly avoiding the pitfall of winching in large chunks of history. Khalifa, in particular, is a fine creation, a decent man struggling with his preconceptions in a world that's become a moral as well as a political hornet's nest. And just when the plot begins to look too obvious, he produces a few more narrative tricks from up his sleeve.

Publishers Weekly

A bestseller overseas, Sussman's follow-up to The Lost Army of the Cambysesopens at Jerusalem's Holy Temple in the year 70, jumps to doomed WWII German prison camp inmates dragging a Nazi-purloined holy relic down an abandoned coal shaft and then fast-forwards to present-day Egypt. There, Det. Insp. Yusef Ezz el-Din Khalifa of the Luxor police investigates the murder of an old man whose body has been found at an archeological site in the Valley of the Kings. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Palestinian journalist Layla al-Madani and Israeli police detective Arieh Ben-Roi have their own sad histories and complicated lives to deal with. Eventually, Sussman twines all the threads into one, and the three principals are hard on the trail of the mysterious artifact hidden by the prisoners. There are familiar Da Vinci Codeelements, but Sussman, an archeologist, puts in plenty of satisfying twists and turns, and grounds the story in the violence and intrigue of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Oct.)

Bradley Scott - Library Journal

Egyptian police detective Yusuf Khalifa returns in Sussman's second historically tinged thriller after The Lost Army of Cambyses. This time he's investigating a mysterious death that may be connected to a host of dark secrets from the past, including an old unsolved murder, Nazi treasure hunters, and the possible fate of a fabled treasure of the Jewish Temple, thought to have been lost since the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Meanwhile, two other investigators, an Israeli detective and a female Palestinian journalist, independently pursue related and converging investigations amid the tension and violence of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The historical nature of the investigation, the religious connections, and the convoluted conspiracies are reminiscent of The Da Vinci Code, but the author's pseudohistorical apparatus is less thoroughly worked out, limiting the book's cult potential. The story has enough energy and action to carry it past a few logical gaps, but the author's portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may strike some readers as unnecessarily provocative, and a supernaturally tinged coda to the story seems artificial and forced. An optional purchase for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ7/07.]

Kirkus Reviews

The search for a hidden treasure that will be either a blessing or a curse for the state of Israel reopens wounds from the Holocaust and threatens to worsen the state of Arab-Israeli relations, if such a thing is possible. This latest entry in the blast from the mysterious biblical past sweepstakes begins with the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD 70 and the last minute spiriting away of the Temple's greatest but mysterious and unrevealed treasure. After a side trip to the Austrian Alps as the Reich is collapsing, where SS troopers are hiding a Large Heavy Box with Unrevealed Contents in a remote salt mine (could there be a connection with the Temple Treasure?), Sussman (The Lost Army of Cambyses, 2003) sets the reader down in today's wretched Middle East for what seem to be unrelated stories in Jerusalem and Cairo, plot lines that will converge and lead-yes-to the Treasure. In Egypt, Inspector Yusuf Khalifa, an honest, hardworking detective with a strong background in archaeology who is nearly the only likable character to be introduced, takes on the case of apparently murdered Dutchman Piet Jansen. Khalifa quickly learns that Jansen was not murdered but was quite possibly the culprit 15 years earlier in Khalifa's first case as a policeman. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, attractive but ruthless Palestinian reporter Layla al-Madani has received an anonymous letter containing a sheet of medieval code that promises to put her in touch with al-Mulatham, a renegade Palestinian firebrand. While Layla follows the code to Cambridge and Languedoc (the tragic heretical Cathars pop up briefly), heartbroken Israeli police detective Arieh Ben-Roi (a suicide bomber showed up at his wedding)nurses his rage against Palestinians, chugs vodka and follows his gut until he gets the phone call from Egypt that will start tying all the plot lines together. Clunky prose swaddles a frantic but unexceptional plot. Agent: Laura Susjin/The Susjin Agency

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