Templar Legacy: by Steve Berry.

How many imitations and parodies, how many attempts to cash on the success of DA Vinci Code with the same format and same history with slightly different turns to the story and convenient solutions to the mystery (so as to not anger the powers quite as much as DVC or its original research base - Holy Blood, Holy Grail - did) - I don't know if anyone has kept a tally. This one might have sold on the name and the huge publicity then to the topic, but if it made waves they were not comparable.

Descriptions of the Knights Templar history and of the Languedoc region with Pyrenées thrown in for good measure, interspersed with a murderous chase across Europe from Copenhagen to Pyrenées and Avignon to Rennes-Le-Chateau, positing Templars alive and well, well hidden in remote Abbeys and attempting to rediscover the famed and very well known wealth they hid so well from Philip IV when he let loose the greed oriented massacre on them that nobody found it until now, forms most of the content of this poor imitation or poorer spoof of DVC.

The author poses a key question, only one, in fourth part- which is the only part that makes it worth a look - and answers it with a solution of a find along with a "let's not rock the boat" comforting for those of official beliefs or those of interests in official beliefs.

To his credit the author does give one - only one - other point of view different from the official church of Rome, but that is the view of the power of oil today, noted mainly due to the shock of "how can they not love us, how can they hate us so much" post 2001 with a convenient belief that this accommodating along with a downright denouncing of any other view will make the things all right once again and oil producers will love the majorly oil consuming populaces.

So while the fourth part asks very relevant questions and posts various facts about the story now over two millennia old, the finalé offers a solution that contradicts a very major point of the very query in the fourth part, and goes with the official version instead, namely, blaming Jews for the execution of an all loving man rather than answering how such an all loving man was executed by Roman powers by the method usually reserved for those that rebelled against Roman occupation of Judea and fought for independence in the usual ways. This makes for a major hole in the book while the very reasonable and rational explanation of the "resurrection" attempts to placate both science and faith, although chances are the latter will reject the obvious.