'Code'-esque novel worth a read

What do you get when you mix the Knights Templar, buried treasure and a bunch of clues only a Sherlock Holmes with a religious studies degree would understand? \nA mediocre knock-off of "The Da Vinci Code." \nThis one's called "The Templar Legacy," by Steve Berry. It came out in February and is part of a new genre of religious history/thriller novels filling up the spaces made for them on bestseller lists when Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" took off as a world-wide success.\nBerry's tale starts off in Copenhagen, Denmark, where retired federal agent Cotton Malone has purchased a bookstore and lives in the apartment above. Stephanie Nelle, Malone's former boss at the Justice Department, is in Copenhagen burning up some vacation time as a pretense for working unnoticed by her employer as she tries to unravel two mysteries: the death of her husband a decade ago and the secret he may have died for. But when her purse gets stolen by a common thief, Malone gives chase, and the foot pursuit ends with Nelle's purse snatcher jumping to his death from a tower, slitting his own throat as he falls to the pavement below. \nTurns out, Malone's friendly lunch date with Nelle turns out to be one last mission.\nIf you picture a retired Lt. Comm. Harmon Rabb, Jr., from the late CBS drama "JAG," you'd be close in assigning the face of actor David James Elliott to Malone, but Nelle is no Catherine Bell, the actor who played Rabb's teammate, Marine Col. Sarah MacKenzie. \nIf you pay close attention in the beginning of the book, you will find out Nelle is in her 60s. This makes her more like a Bea Arthur with street smarts, though she's obviously a desk jockey who doesn't know what it's like to be out in the field. The characters are interesting and well-written, which is why it's possible to assign a face to them.\nBerry also writes his scenes very well, with obvious attention to detail and descriptive writing. The novel feels at times like a travel piece mixed with international intrigue against a backdrop of religious history -- with a few thrills thrown in. This attention to detail, however, doesn't take care of a couple of small problems worth mentioning: At the end of one chapter a character has a revolver, and at the beginning of the next has an automatic. Or, characters will sometimes pull back the hammers of their guns -- usually Glocks or Berettas -- but you don't need to pull the hammer back on an \nautomatic before you fire, which is something any gun-fighting halfwit would know. But Berry isn't expected to be a firearms expert in addition to all the effort he went to in creating such verbal imagery.\nAs Berry's fourth book on the best seller list, "The Templar Legacy" feels familiar if you've read "The Da Vinci Code." \nThe Knights Templar were entrusted with treasure. To protect it, they hid it. The order survived attempts to purge it from the Roman Catholic Church, and the location isn't known, but there are plenty of clues people could use to lead them to the treasure.\nIn "The Templar Legacy," Malone has a patron who doesn't quite measure up to "Da Vinci Code's" Sir Leigh Teabing, but there are some similarities. The antagonist is part of a religious order and wants the treasure for himself, and he does everything he can to stop Malone while trying to get information from Nelle. The list could go on.\nWith 67 chapters, the book seems longer than it is, but there's enough action to keep you turning page after page, even though the style is a little too obvious. Good foreshadowing forgives the predictability of the plot and a couple of deus ex machina's showing up at the last minute.\nThis is a book worth reading because it is interesting, and has a different spin on the Templar Knights than "The Da Vinci Code"