In his latest thriller Raymond KHOURY pits an archaeologist and her daughter against a secret cabal looking for the elixir of life. With many plot twists and turns, mixing historical mystery with present-day action in the Middle East.
A 300 year old search for the Alchemists proverbial "Philosophers' stone" leads to evil men, family secrets, a few people that seem to have access to information and money at will, and the professional and amateur people working to solve this particular mystery.
In 1749 Naples at the height of the inquisition, two men fight for reasons the reader ignores at first knowing only that it is a question of knowledge. During the fight, the prisoner escapes with the irate Prince in pursuit searching in various countries under various names for something that will change the world. In 2003, in Al-Hillah in Iraq archeologist Evelyn Bishop finds a series of underground tunnel chambers and in one of them an ancient codex. On one cell wall is the Ouroboros, the snake that eats itself. She met and fell in love with Tom Webster and together they discovered it was a sanctuary for the Brethren of Purity. Around the same time a group of soldiers discovers a secret laboratory containing evidence of horrific human experimentation and with a cell wall inscribed with the Ouroboros.
Three years later Farouk, who worked with Evelyn in Al-Hillah, finds her in Lebanon offering a book bearing the Ouroboros on its cover. Shortly thereafter Evelyn is kidnapped by someone who wants the codex; her daughter Mia with CIA agent Jim Corbin tries to rescue her. Corbin has his own reasons for helping Mia. The kidnapper wants the book at any price and the seller has them in a secure place. This mission is personal because the sadistic scientist experimented with Hussein's approval on men, women, and children in a horrible way to find something everyone wants to get their hands on, something that if let loose could change the world forever. Corbin knows this because he was present when the secret lab was discovered in 2003.
Tying together these complicated threads is the quest for the meaning of the Ouroboros and what it ultimately represents. The above outline demonstrated that, as a novel, The Sanctuary does provide some suspense and action; the beginning was engrossing before spiraling out of control. It also shows the difficulty the reader encounters in keeping the storyline straight. Many elements, such as a secret society of learned men needed to be developed further. In fact, "The Sanctuary" seems in many ways a preliminary draft for a more fascinating book. Each of the secondary plotlines and each of the characters could be the center of a book. Perhaps that is Khoury's intention. Khoury shows his screen writing experience drawing one-dimensional characters, providing little insight into their motivations and thus making this seem more like a movie outline than speculative fiction which detracts from reader enjoyment. Similar in pace and style to Khoury's previous novel "The last templar" this book fails to persuade the reader of the blend of historical and esoteric facts. A shame given that the topic, the quest to prolong human life-span and the genetic search surrounding it, is itself fascinating.
On the upside there are interesting glimpses into the quest for prolonging life and our motivations. As one of the central characters expounds:
"...Life is defined by the ambition, the need, the urge, to avoid death. That's what makes us human. It's why we have doctors and hospitals. We're the only species that's aware of our own mortality, we're the only species that actually has the capability, the intellect, the awareness, to aspire to defeat it. It's been an ambition of man ever since we've walked on the planet. It's part of our evolutionary process"
Overall a good but unconvincing way to spend a few hours
The Venetian Betrayal - Steve BERRY