The Testament

About The Testament

Eric Van Lustbader's Testament novels move his thriller instincts into religious-conspiracy territory, in the tradition of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon books but with Van Lustbader's own taste for martial tradecraft and secret orders. The Testament (2006) opens with the murder of Dexter Shaw, whose son Braverman "Bravo" Shaw discovers his father was a senior member of the Order of Gnostic Observatines, guardians for eight centuries of a cache of documents that could upend Christianity's foundations. Hunted by the Knights of St. Clement -- the Vatican's own covert enforcers, determined to destroy the Order and its secret for good -- Bravo has to unravel his murdered father's trail of clues before the Knights get there first, aided (and possibly endangered) by a Guardian named Jenny Logan whose loyalties are never fully certain.

The three sequels -- The Fallen (2017), Four Dominions (2018) and The Sum of All Shadows (2019) -- arrived over a decade later and widen the scope considerably, pulling Bravo's world into a larger war between ancient orders, angelic and demonic forces, and modern geopolitics, escalating from historical-conspiracy thriller toward something closer to supernatural-tinged espionage. It's Van Lustbader in Dan Brown mode, but filtered through his usual density of secret societies, split loyalties and constant reversal.