The Printed Page

Title: The Last Ember
Author/website: Daniel Levin
415 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publication date: August ’09
Genre: Suspense/thriller
Would I recommend it: Yes
The Last Ember wasn’t a thriller that I blew my way through. There is so much historical detail within the pages of The Last Ember that I decided to educate myself as this story progressed so I would have a better understanding of what was unfolding before my eyes. Which to me is a good thing as it means I was engaged and interested in this story. Mr. Levin is very familiar with his subject matter (check out his bio) which could have put me at a disadvantage if it weren’t for Wikipedia (check out links at the end of this post). But this didn’t deter me from enjoying a fine thriller. Many twists and turns later, some which truly misled me, I not only figured out what the ultimate goal was but also unraveled Titus’s mistake. Mr. Levin is currerntly writing his next novel and hopefully we’ll be spending more time with Jonathan and Emili on their next antiquities adventure.

In The Last Ember’s opening pages an Italian antiquities squad discovers a woman’s preserved corpse inside an ancient column. Pages torn from priceless manuscripts litter the floor of an abandoned warehouse. Meanwhile, across the Mediterranean, an illegal excavation burrows beneath Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, ground sacred to three religions.

Jonathan Marcus, a young American lawyer and a former doctoral student in classics, has become a sought-after commodity among less scrupulous antiquities dealers. But when he is summoned to Rome, the above events propel him on a perilous journey from the labyrinth beneath the Colosseum to the Biblical-era tunnels of Jerusalem in search of a hidden artifact that has been missing for 2,000 years.

As Marcus and a passionate U.N preservationist, Dr. Emili Travia, dig more deeply into the past, they’re stunned to discover not only an ancient intelligence operation to protect the artifact, but also a ruthless modern plot to destroy all trace of it by a mysterious radical bent on erasing all remnants of Jewish and Christian presence from the Temple Mount.

Here are just a few of the links I visited while enjoying The Last Ember. I tried to keep them story order but I think I lost track along the way.
Forma Urbis
Flavius Josephus
American Academy in Rome
Titus
Temple Menorah (check out the origins section)
Rome Prize
Domus Aurea
Maccabees
Holy of Holies
Colosseum
Temple Mount
Herod’s Temple
Siege of Jerusalem
Great Fire of Rome