A brother of the Order-a medieval secret society uniting noble families in a sacred bond-Sir Hugh de Payens has emerged from the First Crusade a broken man seeking to dedicate his life to God. But the Order has other plans for him: to uncover a deadly secret that could shatter the very might of the Church itself.

From Publishers WeeklyVeteran of eight Arthurian novels (The Lance Thrower, etc.), Whyte turns to the Crusades with this tedious first volume of a Knights Templar trilogy. In 1088, young knight Hugh de Payens is initiated into the secret Order of the Rebirth of Sion, who believe the Christian Church to be "an invalid creation... built upon a myth." Founded by Jewish families fleeing the Romans, the Order believes that the truth about Jesus and the founding of Christianity lie buried beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. When Pope Urban calls for a Holy Crusade to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims, the Order"given to interminable monologues"sees an opportunity to perhaps retrieve those ancient documents and sends Sir Hugh and others to join the Crusaders, yakking the whole way. After the bloody fall of Jerusalem, Sir Hugh establishes a new order of warrior monks as a cover for the excavation of the Temple Mount, and the race is on to find the hidden treasure, if it exists, before their activities are discovered. This tepid Templar foray will be crowded out at the gates.

From BooklistReaders of Whyte's Camulod series (eight novels set during the Arthurian period) will be very excited to jump into this, the first of a projected trilogy chronicling the birth of the Knights Templar. The novel begins in 1088, as Hugh St. Clair, a French nobleman, joins a mysterious society known as the Order. Soon Hugh is hip deep in the blood and gore of the First Crusade, which so scars him that he dedicates the rest of his life to serving God. But things don't go exactly according to plan, and soon Hugh is part of an elite band of monks whose religious devotion is matched by their skill at hand-to-hand combat. Whyte, a master at painting pictures on an epic-sized canvas, pulls the reader into the story with his usual deft combination of historical drama and old--fashioned adventure. One warning, though: when you put this one down, you may immediately begin salivating for volume 2.