Raymond Khoury – Malcolm's Round Table

Reading Raymond Khoury’s The Devil’s Elixir can be hazardous to your sleep cycle! You won’t be able to put the book down until you reach the last page.

Once again, Khoury pairs up FBI agent Sean Reilly and archeologist Tess Chaykin whom long-time Khoury fans already know from their tangled and dangerous destinies in The Last Templar and The Templar Salvation. (See also my review of The Templar Salvation.) In this high-energy thriller, Reilly and Chaykin shift their focus from Templar and Vatican mysteries to a potentially more dangerous secret extracted and resynthesized out of the South American rainforest.

Eusebio, the priest who learned about a psychoactive alkaloid from a tribal shaman in 1741, viewed the “sacred brew” as a catalyst that could lead a seeker toward mystical enlightenment. Álvaro, his Jesuit brother at the mission, called the drug the devil’s elixir. In the hands of a present-day drug lord named El Brujo the drug represents not only a belief-changing experience but a chance for unlimited profits with a potion more powerful than meth, cocaine and heroine combined.

Reilly is is drawn away from New York into the high-body-count world of drug cartels and kidnappings when a former girlfriend calls to report her life is in danger. Former DEA agent Michelle Martinez’s story is so compelling that Reilly packs his bags and heads for San Diego immediately. Soon, his life will be at risk as will Chaykin’s. One way or another, sparks fly when Reilly and Chaykin are involved in a case. This time out, there are a couple of additional complications, one being that Reilly never told Chaykin about his earlier relationship with the “seriously hot” Martinez.

Khoury’s story moves briskly with alternating chapters from the perspectives of El Brujo, southwestern FBI operatives, the drug lord’s foot soldiers, Reilly and Chaykin. This approach heightens the intrigue by showing the reader thrills, chills and plot twists that the primary characters have yet to discover. Reilly is a strong-willed, indefatigable FBI agent who gives everything he has to keep his loved ones safe while keeping the devil’s elixir out of the black market supply chain. At the same time, his conscience constantly asks him whether the ends justify his means.

Readers new to Khoury’s fiction may think as they finish each chapter in The Devil’s Elixir, “certainly things can’t get any worse than this.” Those who have read The Last Templar and The Templar Salvation know things never get better until the story’s over because following a Khoury plot is similar to riding a snowball through hell.

The Devil’s Elixir is a delightfully breath-searing ride.

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Book Details

The Devil’s Elixir by Raymond Khoury

Hardcover: 384 pages

Publisher: Dutton Adult (December 22, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0525952438

ISBN-13: 978-0525952435

—Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of four novels, including the recent contemporary fantasy Sarabande.

The Templar Salvation by Raymond Khoury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Raymond Khoury’s The Templar Salvation (2010) sequel to The Last Templar (2006) is better than the original. Like the original, The Templar Salvation presents a story of lost/hidden church secrets with dual time lines, a lot of historical detail, and plenty of action.

In the present day, Khoury brings back FBI agent Sean Reilly and archeologist Tess Chaykin in a race with terrorist Mansoor Zahed to find a cache of early Christian documents. In 1203, while the Fourth Crusade siege of Constantinople is in progress, a small band of Templars sets out to rescue and then hide the same set of documents. In both time lines, the Catholic church doesn’t want the documents to come to light.

The Last Templar featured an amazing opening scene. The Templar Salvation’s opening, while slightly less spectacular is action-oriented and inventive. Tess is in danger. Sean rushes to the rescue and, in spite of the law enforcement resources available in Turkey and at the Vatican, becomes the point man in a search for Tess, Mansoor, the documents, and a variety of people who end up dead.

The Templar Salvation is more tightly woven than The Last Templar. It also contains fewer “talky scenes” where Tess and/or Sean explain elements of the 1203 story to present day police officers as though 800-year-old information trumps current evidence or the need to get out of the squad room with some sense of urgency. The Templar Salvation might be called “The Book That Will Not End.” Tess, Sean and Mansoor find themselves within nanoseconds of being killed (or worse) numerous times throughout the story only to escape/survive and keep on searching, fighting or running.

Nonetheless, the improbable story somehow makes for more exciting reading than The Last Templar. The Templar Salvation is a violent, tangled, twisted, groaner kind of escapist read that features the kind of over-the-top, don’t-worry-about-civilian-deaths-and-collateral-damage law enforcement that viewers of the TV series “24” tuned in every week to see.

Like agent Jack Bauer in “24,” Sean Reilly is as relentless as a Terminator in his quest for neutralizing the bad guys and possibly obtaining justice. And, like Jack, Sean keeps going, going and going even though his wounds would have killed ten normal men.

The book is a guilty pleasure.

View all my reviews

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire,” “Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey,” and “The Sun Singer.”

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Tag: Raymond Khoury

Review: ‘The Devil’s Elixir’ by Raymond Khoury

Review: ‘The Templar Salvation’