Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2471 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 567 pages

Daily Express
`Compulsive reading ... successfully blends ancient teachings with the highly charged ways of the 21st century ... bears all the hallmarks of a blockbuster'

Piers Morgan
`The best thriller I've read in years.'

Esquire

'More readable than The Da Vinci Code - the sense of menace is darker and the characters more believable'

Customer Reviews

Good Read But ....
Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of journalist Jonathan Freedland and this is a half decent thriller novel that sadly falls down in a number of areas.
It has received mixed reviews and it is easy to see why. You could be forgiven for sighing and saying "Not another thriller novel about the unravelling of codes." This is a genre which in effect began with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. Numerous authors jumped on the bandwagon and the market was flooded with such books.

Here we enter the world of Israeli/Palestinian conflicts. An historic deal is about to be signed but a man rushes towards the Israeli Prime Minister at a rally. He is known to be an opponent of the prime ministers and is shot dead. In his hand is not a gun but a piece of paper.

American/Irish peace negotiator Maggie Costello gives up her quiet life to return to international intrigue in an attempt to keep both sides on track. Unfortunately Maggie spends little time acting as a diplomat, but plenty searching for an elusive tablet that hides a remarkable truth.
Bourne's can't quite make up his mind whether this should be an adventure novel or a more series attempt to shed some light on the Israeli/Palestine conflict.

It therefore drops somewhere between the two. The politics of the area are difficult to comprehend and Bourne seems to get bogged down in this fact with large passages that are difficult to understand within the context of the story as a whole. That said it is a page turner and a reasonable attempt to bring to life the feel of the area, but there is still something missing. It is certainly well researched but towards the end the dialogue and action borders on the silly and the final development is very predictable.

Predictable
After reading many positive reviews about this book all I can say is I was left utterly disappointed. It didn't help that it took a fair amount of time to get the ball rolling and for the plot to develop. The Characters were all dull and predictable and I could even see where and when the twists and turns were coming. I have avoided giving this book 1 star for the simple fact that it had potential but like so many of this genre it failed to deliver

Very disappointing
Having seen good reviews for this book I decided to buy it for a holiday read but within a couple of chapters I was still waiting for the plot to start! Despite a strong desire to give up (I just didn't care about any of the characters and pretty much new what was going to happen) I finished the book. Very disappointing. It was like watching a very average action film.