HarperNorth first paperback edition - 2024
As I finished the last page of this Ben Hope thriller, the trite phrase all good things must come to an end, flashed across my mind. It wasn't a shock or even a surprise that the author had called time after thirty outings for his ex-SAS hero. I was forewarned in the June 2024 issue of the Ricardian Bulletin of the Richard III Society, where Scott Mariani was interviewed by its editor. He had recently published The Tudor Deception about one of the many mysteries surrounding the Last Plantagenet and said the writing of it inspired him to become a historical author. He enters a crowded, - and often not very inspired or quality - field, so I wish him well. As for Ben? He is going to be left in a place where I might revisit him - or I might not. There were several clues anyway in this 'final' book - one of Ben's two best friends based at the training centre at Le Val, Tuesday Fletcher, who had appeared in so many of the previous novels, is killed, whilst the other, Jeff Dekker decides to call it a day and return to England; Ben's beloved Blue Alpine car is destroyed; and the old green canvas bag/haversack that accompanied him on most of his exploits is lost in another explosion. Both eruptions, of course, were caused by Ben.
I have all thirty paperbacks hogging an entire shelf in my study. From the very first - The Alchemist's Secret - to this one, The Templar's Secret. I can think of only one that failed to live up to my expectations and I won't name it; and perhaps one or two where the detailed (often political or historical) backstory dragged on rather. Of course, one can hardly go wrong with a novel involving the Templars, thanks to Dan Brown and others, even Sir Walter Scott! Ben's last exploit is as thrilling as any. He finds himself caught up in the attempts by the modern day inheritors (or they think they are) of a massive Templar Secret to use any means to thwart any attempt to uncover it. Equally, a sinister group in the Vatican will also use murder to keep the secret hidden. Roberta Ryder's expertise and Ben's derring do are enough to foil both parties. The cliffs and rocky scrubland, the barren plains and olive groves, the forests and coast of southern France provide an ideal background for this tale of skullduggery. I'd never heard of an alternative Johannite Church before (apparently, it enacts the Johannite Tradition through an esoteric, Gnostic and Christian path of spiritual understanding and self-discovery, and has churches in the USA, Canada and Australia), and I assume they are nothing like Grand Master De Sorbiac and his evil henchmen in practice. The pace is either hectic or more so and great fun.
There have been many girl friends on the way, some romantic and some mere passing fancies. In the very first novel, Roberta Ryder, an American biologist working out of Paris and in her early 30s, gets entangled with Ben, who is five or six years older (which places him in his 50s by the end of the series!). In the second book, The Mozart Conspiracy (2008), Ben actually gets married to Leigh Llewellyn but she is killed. Inevitably, it takes time for any healing to occur, so Alex Fiorante loses out in The Doomsday Project (2009). However, Dr. Brooke Marcel, the half French medic, who appears in The Heretic Treasure (2009), The Shadow Project (2010), The Lost Relic (2011), The Sacred Sword (2012), and The Armada Legacy (2013), becomes his fiancé, only to call it off in The Nemesis Program (2014), unable to cope with his dangerous exploits. Moreover, Roberta Ryder has reappeared, even if she has had to flee to Canada and change her name to Dr. Roberta Kaminski and her hair colour to blonde for self-preservation. Meanwhile, Darcey Kane, Erin Hayes, Sylvie Valois, Madison Cahill and Jessie Hogan pass through, whilst Sandrine Lacombe, another French doctor, appears to have more of a chance! Grace Kirk, the Scottish policewoman, who figures in The Pretender's Gold (2020) and The Demon Club (2020), bows out at the start of The Pandemic Plot (2021), realising like Brooke Marcel, that Ben's lifestyle is too traumatic for her. There are still two more 'flames' - the Australian pilot Abbi Logan in The Silver Serpent (2022) and Graveyard of Empires (2022); and Detective Shi Yun Lin in The Golden Library (2024) - and a brief return of Madison Cahill in Graveyard of Empires; but they are not for Ben. It is Roberta Ryder who eventually gets her man. Ben could do worse - she was effortlessly attractive and beguiling, brilliantly intelligent, frequently cantankerous, the most opinionated and headstrong woman he'd ever known.
Scott adds a further couple of pages after an Epilogue. How do you bring an extended series like this to a conclusion...? I would never have considered letting him die a hero's death, which I don't think my readers would ever have forgiven me for doing. Equally out of the question was the thought of consigning him to a life of domestic bliss (does Roberta Ryder know this?), so the author decided to leave him in a good place...that perhaps offers the chance of happiness that has eluded him for so long.
This means leaving Ben and Roberta strolling barefoot on the sands of Jamaica's north coast; however, Roberta, who knows Ben nearly as well as we do, has to ask: 'What's happening with us, Ben? Where do things go from here? Will it work out between us?' She clearly lives in Hope - so does the reader.
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