Red Templar by Paul Christopher Review
Reviewed by Rachel Legg
Firstly I need to state that this book is the 6th in Paul Christopher’s Templars series and I have not read the previous five which may colour my opinion slightly.
The books are based around an ex-army ranger called John Holliday and his adventures discovering the secrets of the Knights Templar, and are conspiracy thrillers based in the present day with references to modern history and political figures.
This particular book concentrates on Holliday’s search for a missing Templar sword which takes him into Russia and Ivan the Terrible’s hidden vaults under the Kremlin. I managed to read this book as a standalone novel but I was probably missing out on some of the back story and to be fair I never really understood why everyone was trying to kill Holliday and his companion, it was a source of some confusion!
In all honesty I struggled with this book, the authors habit of changing from referring to characters by surname then first name was confusing, the long, complex, yet similar Russian names were hard to keep straight, and the multiple alphabet agencies both American and Russian just added to the confusion. I struggled to actually understand why the varying agencies were involved and this never seemed to be explained. On the positive side, the end of the book did get more interesting though rather formulaic and Holliday’s companion Eddie was well written and the most interesting character in the book.
If you’ve read the other books I am sure you would like this one but I found it fairly weak, the writing clunky and filled with a lot of unnecessary descriptions particularly of people who were invariably dead within a paragraph. I prefer Dan Brown!
Rating: 2.5
RRP: £7.99 (Paperback) / £4.99 (Kindle)
Available to buy from Amazon here.
