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    The Last Testament
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    The Last Testament
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    The Last Testament
    Ebook492 pages9 hours

    The Last Testament

    By Sam Bourne

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Set against the backdrop of the world’s most bitter international conflict, The Last Testament is a brilliantly layered conspiracy thriller from Sam Bourne, author of the New York Times bestseller The Righteous Men. Jeffery Deaver, author of Cold Moon, has called Bourne’s writing, “thoroughly enjoyable and compelling,” and fans of Dan Brown, Raymond Khoury, and Daniel Pearl will eagerly devour this ingenious blend of religious and political intrigue. Nebraska’s Lincoln Journal Star calls The Last Testament, “A bloody well-done tale and it might even some day be true.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 28, 2009
    ISBN9780061866432
    Author

    Sam Bourne

    Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of Jonathan Freedland, an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. He has written a weekly column for the Guardian since 1997, having previously served as the paper’s Washington correspondent, and presents Radio 4’s contemporary history programme, The Long View. His first novel, The Righteous Men, was a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller. He lives in London with his wife and their two children.

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    Reviews for The Last Testament

    3.5/5

    14 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Book Description April 2003: As his nation descends into chaos, an Iraqi boy loots an ancient clay tablet from a long-forgotten vault in the Baghdad Museum of Antiquities—unaware that his actions could ignite the war to end all wars. Years later, on the eve of a historic Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, bodyguards for Israel's prime minister gun down a possible assassin—and discover a blood-stained note clutched in the dead man's hand. With Middle Eastern tensions rapidly reaching the boiling point—in the wake of a frightening wave of seemingly random revenge killings—Maggie Costello is sent by Washington to try to keep the peace. A government negotiator with old sins to atone for, she immediately comes face-to-face with ancient secrets, extremist violence, and sudden, inexplicable death. For Maggie seems to hold the key to the last unsolved riddle of the Bible—a shocking revelation that could end the world's most bitter conflict . . . or leave the earth in ruins.

      My Review If you like books about political intrigue and Middle Eastern affairs, then this book is for you. It is a very good Biblical thriller with many twists and turns. I loved the well-developed character of Maggie Costello and I look forward to reading the next Sam Bourne book as I find his books very entertaining.
    • 2/5
      'The Mirror' reviewed it as "The biggest challenger to Dan Brown's crown." Well, hardly... not even close, especially not this book. The plot of the story centers around the brokering of a Middle East peace treaty, and the discovery of an object from antiquity, a tablet which turns out to be the last will and testament of a Biblical patriarch, bearing the bequeathment of Mount Moriah (aka the Temple Mount).

      The pace of the story was not all that engaging until about the last third of the book. Also, rather distracting was the timeline which kept switching from the present to the past, and from different perspectives at that, so that made the flow rather disjointed.
    • 2/5
      It wasn't great - even in Danish.
      There was a distinct lack of tension, and it didn't grip me at all. Took practically an eternity to get through, and I only finished it 'cause the library sent me an email saying it'd gotta go back!
      It's set in the Middle-Dast of course, and is connected with Middle-East peace talks. Given that we all know they'll never have peace down there, not while anyone from either side is alive/believes that their god gave them exclusive rights to the area; it can hardly be expected to generate any tension based on something potentially de-railling the latest round of talks/mud-casting.
      So, it's gotta be better in other areas, in tension, in action, in personal relationships, and while it tries, it can't quite believe enough in itself to pull it off.
      Then, the final revelation of what the whole thing turned on, that has been not quite revealled many times previously, was a bit ho-hum, as well. Especially, as it doesn't take a 5-year-old to tell you that no matter what it is, either side will denounce it as a fake anyway.
      I read one of his previous books (in English); The Righteous Men, and as a Dan Brown photocopy, it wasn't half bad. But this...well, I won't be rushing to check out any more. Even free from the library.
    • 3/5
      Well-paced, well characterised action novel. The unreality of the plot doesn't get in the way of a good read!
    • 2/5
      “The Last Testament” tries to be “The DaVinci Code” and doesn’t come close.With the backdrop of Israeli/Palestinian peace talks, a small tablet written by Abraham is discovered. Of course what it says is revealed at the very end, but it’s not hard to figure out. The protagonist is Maggie Costello, a diplomatic negotiator for the US who’s brought in from retirement to spearhead the talks. A bunch of chasing and running around ensues.One of the problems is that Maggie is supposed to be this grant negotiator, but we only get a small glimpse of that at the beginning as she’s mediating a divorce. We hear all about a major mistake she made previously (which is what put her into retirement). But we never really see why she’s deemed so valuable. Then all of sudden she’s running around Israel trying to discover why partisans on both sides of the talks have been killed.I’m not sure why I continued to read the book and once again swear not to do so any more. There are too many good books out there to waste time on one.
    • 1/5
      Very much in the Dan Brown cookie cutter type of novel. Not a bad read, but not great.
    • 4/5
      I've got to admit that I was a bit bored by the first few pages of the book as I'm a bit ignorant of the situation in Izrael. But then i read a few more pages and realised why Bourne was described as "the biggest challenger to Dan Brown's crown". In incredible chapters Maggie Costello the peace negotiator follows clues to find a hidden will which could change everything. And everyone seems to be a triator.
    • 3/5
      After a year in Washington, DC, Maggie Costello is smothering under the control of her boyfriend, Edward, and her job as a divorce mediator. Until Washington she had been another kind of mediator, one involved in big stakes in the high-pressure world of international politics. When the US government needed someone to bring two opposing sides together, they called Maggie. And it worked well until something went very wrong and real people paid the price with their lives and so she ended up in Washington with Edward mediating fights between couples instead of countries.One morning Maggie receives a visit by a government agent who convinces her to return to her first natural talent and she quickly finds herself in the midst of a tense standoff between Israel and Palestine. When a murder of a prominent right-wing activist stalls the talks, Maggie steps in to investigate. What she finds leads her on a spine-tingling, intensive hunt for the murderer and where at times she becomes the hunted. Along the way Maggie has the help of Uri Guttman, a man who is trying to discover what role his father played in the sensitive mid-east peace process. A blurb on the back cover of this novel says it is “The biggest challenger to Dan Brown’s crown”. I can see why. It’s similar in that there are two characters who follow the trail of an ancient artifact knowing that what it reveals will change the course of history. And like Dan Brown’s book, The Last Testament also has plenty of short chapters with most having cliff-hangers at the end of them. But the similarity ends there. It does after all take place in the Middle East. I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that if you liked the Da Vinci Code you will also enjoy this book.
    • 4/5
      Israel and Palestine are close to accord, settling the age old dispute that has wracked the region for generations. Top negotiator Maggie Costello (an Irish woman if you will!) is asked to assist in the talks but other peoples machinations and an age-old document (nothing less than the testament of Abraham himself) threaten to derail the process. I won't reveal much more than that but what you have here is a fast-paced, action-packed book that entertains while delivering some historical and political information. I didn't think that the characters were hugely developed (and I'll always question a male writer choosing a female lead character). Like other Bourne books, I found this one to be well-researched and the author manages the mix history, politics and drama quite well.
    • 4/5
      Title: THE LAST TESTAMENTAuthor: Sam BournePublisher: Harper CollinsEdition released: July 2007ISBN: 978-0-00-720333-8442 pagesReview by: Karen ChisholmThe blurb for THE LAST TESTAMENT reads along the lines of "The Biggest Challenger to Dan Brown's Crown" and "A brilliant new high-concept religious conspiracy theory thriller", which might put some readers off, or at the very least set you up with some pre-conceived conceptions about the book. Ignore all of that and you'll be getting a fast paced, believable thriller which sets itself within a current day conflict in a very realistic manner.In the dying days of the regime in Iraq, the Baghdad Museum of Antiquities is looted. A young boy takes an ancient clay tablet, hidden away in a forgotten vault.At a rally for the signing of an historical peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, Israeli security forces shoot dead a Jewish man, pushing his way through the crowd towards the Israeli Prime Minister. Instead of a gun, the man they thought was an assassin held a blood-stained note, addressed to his old friend the Prime Minister.The peace negotiations falter as a series of tit for tat killings start up in both the Palestinian and Jewish territories. Washington takes the rather unusual step of calling in once star negotiator Maggie Costello, despite the fact that her last involvement in official negotiation ended in semi-disgrace. Costello arrives in Jerusalem and is instantly plunged into a mystery rooted in the last unsolved riddle of the Bible, with extremists on both sides not afraid to kill and menace to push the negotiations in the direction that they want.THE LAST TESTAMENT is a thriller with a certain level of suspension of disbelief required from the start. Early on the reader is really wondering why on earth Maggie would be called back to work as a negotiator - her personal life and her previous entanglements in other negotiations would seem to make her a bit of a liability! On the other hand, when she arrives in Jerusalem and basically heads off out of the negotiation arena, on her own private quest to solve a riddle, you're really wondering what on earth is going on for a while. But, ultimately, if the test of a good thriller is whether or not you're more than happy to let some of the niggling inconsistencies roll whilst the story drags you along, then THE LAST TESTAMENT delivers in spades.Sure there's a premise at the base of THE LAST TESTAMENT that has the potential to cause religious debate and maybe even controversy, making it another potential entrant in the "stirring up religious debate" category of thrillers that have been doing the rounds recently. Whether or not that's a category of book that suits you will be very dependent on each individual reader.Maggie's not a bad character - she's a bit flawed, a bit insecure, a bit useless when it comes to sorting out her own life - but she knows it and she's not self-pitying about it. The other main character, Uri - son of the murdered suspected assassin is a bit ethereal in the book - there's a little of his background, enough to flesh him out a bit, but not enough to ever really let the reader inside his head too far and that's a bit tantalising. There are some other secondary characters that are interesting, some that are perhaps a little too predictable, but they fit within the general persona of the novel and the location it is set in.Where THE LAST TESTAMENT appealed was in the realistic feel of the location of the story, and the way that the events moved rapidly. There are some twists and turns at the end, some of which were predictable and some were not. Even the more predictable elements weren't bland though, there were some nice gotcha moments that gave them some spark and interest.