The Last Testament

April 2003: an Iraqi boy loots an ancient clay tablet from a long-forgotten vault in the Baghdad Museum of Antiquities. Years later, at a rally for the signing of a historic deal between Israel and the Palestinians, a suspected assassin pushes through the crowd toward the Israeli prime minister. Bodyguards shoot the man dead. But in his hand there is no gun only a blood-stained note. A series of seemingly random revenge killings follows and tensions boil over. Washington calls in star peace-negotiator Maggie Costello. With her relationship in trouble and old sins to atone for, Maggie finds herself in an impossible situation, especially when she discovers the murders are not random. Someone is killing archaeologists and historians those who know the buried secrets of the ancient past. Menaced on all sides by violent extremists, Costello is plunged into a mystery rooted in the last unsolved riddle of the Bible. The truth could end hostilities or spark the war to end all wars. Publishers Weekly Bestseller Bourne (the pseudonym of British journalist Jonathan Freedland) follows his 2006 debut, The Righteous Men , with another Jewish-themed thriller, a cliché-ridden hodgepodge. Weeks before a closely fought U.S. presidential election, disgraced diplomat Maggie Costello comes out of self-imposed exile to mediate a final Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. When a prominent right-wing academic, Shimon Guttman, tries to reach the Israeli prime minister with an urgent message during a peace rally, security guards gun him down because they fear he was trying to assassinate the prime minister. Costello joins with Guttman's son to track down the secret his father uncovered that could radically affect the negotiations. Bourne does nothing to endear Costello to readers by revealing the reason for her earlier diplomatic disgrace. The ludicrous denouement involves a high-ranking official confessing to all his misdeeds while unknowingly being filmed on a Web cam. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. The shooting of a man at a historic government peace accord prompts negotiator Maggie Costello to investigate a series of deaths at West Bank Jewish settlements and Palestinian refugee camps Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 8, 2009).