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Ben Kamal and Danielle Barnea #7
The Last Prophecy
1945: While liberating a concentration camp, an American medical unit uncovers something beneath a body-laden trench. Sixty years later, the survivors of that unit are systematically murdered because of what they saw.
The Enter former Palestinian-American detective Ben Kamal and his Israeli counterpart, Danielle Barnea. Working for the United Nations, Ben and Danielle are forced to return to the Middle East to investigate a massacre in a Palestinian village. The quickly learn that the roots of that massacre lie elsewhere, in another era, on another continent.
While Ben follows the trail of the shadowy force responsible, Danielle finds herself swept into a maelstrom where the past and the present collide, joined by an ancient text of prophecies that predicts a cataclysmic event about to strike the United States. The only way to change a fate foretold long before is to decipher a cryptic message shrouded in secrecy and guarded by a hidden army.
As time ticks down, Ben and Danielle face off against a new and all-powerful enemy with its own crazed reasons for wanting America's very way-of-life destroyed. Their only to use The Last Prophecy.
The Enter former Palestinian-American detective Ben Kamal and his Israeli counterpart, Danielle Barnea. Working for the United Nations, Ben and Danielle are forced to return to the Middle East to investigate a massacre in a Palestinian village. The quickly learn that the roots of that massacre lie elsewhere, in another era, on another continent.
While Ben follows the trail of the shadowy force responsible, Danielle finds herself swept into a maelstrom where the past and the present collide, joined by an ancient text of prophecies that predicts a cataclysmic event about to strike the United States. The only way to change a fate foretold long before is to decipher a cryptic message shrouded in secrecy and guarded by a hidden army.
As time ticks down, Ben and Danielle face off against a new and all-powerful enemy with its own crazed reasons for wanting America's very way-of-life destroyed. Their only to use The Last Prophecy.
432 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
3 people are currently reading
153 people want to read
About the author
Jon Land
129 books408 followersJon Land is an American author of thriller novels and a screenwriter. He graduated from Brown University in 1979 Phi Beta Kappa and Magna cum Laude. He often bases his novels and scripts on extensive travel and research as well as a twenty-five year career in martial arts. He is an associate member of the US Special Forces and is an emeritus board member the International Thriller Writers. John currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
January 12, 2016
Okay, maybe some of it is a bit of a cliché and hard to believe, but I found it hard to put down. I love Ben Kamal and Danielle Barnea, a pity this seems to be the last in the series.
September 29, 2022
It was the first book in the series that I read and if I had read some of the earlier novels, maybe my opinion would have been better.
I found this book to be incredibly slow for about the first two-thirds of it with all of the action picking up once Ben and Danielle teamed up. And I liked Jake the computer geek.
I will say that I was drawn to the book by its publicity that said if you liked DaVinci Code, and I did, I'd probably like this book. Not exactly.
The final chapter was a bit outrageous when we were told who was the brainstorm behind a potential terrorist attack on the entire USA. The idea, once it was announced about half way through this book, seemed plausible. I will give some credit to that.
This book was published two years after the 9-11 attack so sleeper cells and Middle Eastern terrorists were more front and center then. More so in our mindsets than they are now I regret to say
A lot of what transpired in this novel was related to the previously unknown prophecies of Nostradamus. But it seemed unnecessary to the plot. This sort of terrorist threat could have had it's genesis in something utterly different such as an intercepted message or the words of a dying spy. The whole Nostradamus thing had the appearance of just trying to jump on the bandwagon of those secret history books that were cropping up during the 2000's due to the success of "The DaVinci Code." I actually like books like that if they're done correctly.
Like I said it is the first book I've read by Jon Land so maybe I missed something about the characters. But I don't think I will read another.
I found this book to be incredibly slow for about the first two-thirds of it with all of the action picking up once Ben and Danielle teamed up. And I liked Jake the computer geek.
I will say that I was drawn to the book by its publicity that said if you liked DaVinci Code, and I did, I'd probably like this book. Not exactly.
The final chapter was a bit outrageous when we were told who was the brainstorm behind a potential terrorist attack on the entire USA. The idea, once it was announced about half way through this book, seemed plausible. I will give some credit to that.
This book was published two years after the 9-11 attack so sleeper cells and Middle Eastern terrorists were more front and center then. More so in our mindsets than they are now I regret to say
A lot of what transpired in this novel was related to the previously unknown prophecies of Nostradamus. But it seemed unnecessary to the plot. This sort of terrorist threat could have had it's genesis in something utterly different such as an intercepted message or the words of a dying spy. The whole Nostradamus thing had the appearance of just trying to jump on the bandwagon of those secret history books that were cropping up during the 2000's due to the success of "The DaVinci Code." I actually like books like that if they're done correctly.
Like I said it is the first book I've read by Jon Land so maybe I missed something about the characters. But I don't think I will read another.
January 4, 2026
This was an interesting book to read after reading The Source by Mitchner, because it has 2 man characters who are closely linked to the same land area and their specific viewpoints are closely linked to their perceptions in dealing with the mystery of this novel. To be clear, the last prophecy referenced to one made by Nostradamus, whose foretelling have come early close to real life occurrences and people have been talking about his possible predictions for our present time now as the USA reaches its 250th year of being a nation in 2026. For those who don't know how Nostradamus, he wrote his "predictions" in a series of quatrains ( 942 of them) in a book published in 1555, called Les Propheties. It is the translation of the last quatrain or misinterpretation that is the main story of the novel, and why a certain group of soldiers were being killed off one by one, despite their advance age, decades after they found something unusual under the massive grave at one of the Nazi detention camps, Buchenwald. The 2 detectives are investigating separate incident in Palestine, Gaza area, that somehow gets linked to what the unit discovered in the 1940s, because of one person's misinterpretation of one of Nostradamus quatrains. If you like mystery and suspense written in story line similar to the Maltese Falcon, where you have to read the entire book to solve the mystery , this book is for you to read
October 4, 2019
I love the characters of Ben Kamal and Danielle Barnea, but the quantities of the mass killings found in these novels is a little off putting. This story ties together numerous incidents throughout the world to uncover a conspiracy of huge proportions. The US is in danger and D & B are as usual at the forefront despite being ostracized by their own people. Thankfully they have hidden sources almost everywhere and are very good at improvisation.
August 25, 2020
Actually, I'm not finished; I'm finished with the book. I could no longer force myself to continue reading the book. I like the main characters and the idea of Nostradamus prophecy. But the Prophecy didn't come up until the middle of the book. Then there was more dialog. I'm surprised that I didn't really like this book by Jon Land. I've read the Strong series and I love it.
July 10, 2019
I liked this better than the DaVinci Code.
February 9, 2015
Well, I really should have liked this book. International conspiracy, illuminati type bad guys, Nostradamus, Nazi's...but it was just flat. The biggest problem was that these terrorists/secret society folks would get so worked up that a handful of WWII vets had translated one of Nostradamus' last prophecies...and that it vaguely said that something bad was going to happen...in that vague Nostradamus way. "The sun will set and the fire will reach the millions...the sand will swirl and the final chime will sound." Yeah, like that's really gonna tip everyone off to what your plans are. So they proceed to traverse the globe killing these vets and anyone who has read the prophecy, and I just didn't care. I had hoped once the secret prophecy was revealed things would pick up...they didn't. The only thing that was revealed was how flimsy this plot was and I just couldn't stay interested. So I quit about halfway through. I really didn't even care how it ended. I was halfway done with the book and I still had no idea what the big bad thing they were trying to stop actually was. Were they trying to start a war? Kill somebody important? No idea. I didn't even care enough to skip to the end. Lame all around.
This was such an awful and clunky book. The story made zero sense and zipped around the world. The big secret was laughable. I kept reading hoping that the big reveal would make it worth it...um, no. The fact that some WWII vets had deciphered a Nazi code that revealed that something vague, and semi-sinister would happen at some point in time was enough to worry supposed illuminati-style bad guys enough to hunt them across the globe and kill them? Please. It was sad. It was so bad that I threw it in the trash when I was three-quarters through it. I just couldn't make myself finish it. "But what happened to the..." I don't care. I will never read another Jon Land book. It was awful.
This was such an awful and clunky book. The story made zero sense and zipped around the world. The big secret was laughable. I kept reading hoping that the big reveal would make it worth it...um, no. The fact that some WWII vets had deciphered a Nazi code that revealed that something vague, and semi-sinister would happen at some point in time was enough to worry supposed illuminati-style bad guys enough to hunt them across the globe and kill them? Please. It was sad. It was so bad that I threw it in the trash when I was three-quarters through it. I just couldn't make myself finish it. "But what happened to the..." I don't care. I will never read another Jon Land book. It was awful.
December 20, 2013
I’ve seen this book many times past. Not exactly this one book but other books, films, and tales with the same basic plot: intrepid adventurers discover an ancient and secret writing or glyph well hidden in some exotic/dangerous/gruesome local. Only some obscure university professor/retired cryptographer/computer geek can decode this mysterious writing. Meantime, eeevil (keep “eeevil") forces conduct a virulent campaign of violence and skulduggery to prevent the decoding and to keep the adventurers at bay: usually a handsome fellow and comely lass who initially are at loggerheads, then sure enough they find love, etc. Overcoming all hazards the pair get the text decoded and sure enough it details incantations to call Beelzebub to rise from Hades to purloin our souls, or reveals the scheme of some ancient religious order/military cabal/or space aliens plans to rule/destroy the world.
Back to the book. The Last Prophecy is seriously overwritten in codswallop: 414 pages of small print in the paperback edition. The flood of words becloud the thrust of an obscure and typically thin plot. The narrative lacks coherence making it difficult to comprehend—it wanders from local to local introducing different characters with agendas that seem to be disconnected. We are inundated with ornamental minutiae that muddle the narrative making this tome even more difficult to follow—it’s just so much unnecessary word filler. Another negative I have with this book is that the author suffused the narrative with screeds about how awful/brutal/inhuman the Israelis treat the downtrodden, deserving, and debauched Palestinians. Lastly, at last, the plot is contrived to a crippling fault in several scenes as the Deus ex machina saves our daring-do characters from a fate worse than death, or even worse.
Actually, stripped with extremely sharp editing, this book would make a straight forward, interesting adventure novella of 50K words or thereabouts.
Back to the book. The Last Prophecy is seriously overwritten in codswallop: 414 pages of small print in the paperback edition. The flood of words becloud the thrust of an obscure and typically thin plot. The narrative lacks coherence making it difficult to comprehend—it wanders from local to local introducing different characters with agendas that seem to be disconnected. We are inundated with ornamental minutiae that muddle the narrative making this tome even more difficult to follow—it’s just so much unnecessary word filler. Another negative I have with this book is that the author suffused the narrative with screeds about how awful/brutal/inhuman the Israelis treat the downtrodden, deserving, and debauched Palestinians. Lastly, at last, the plot is contrived to a crippling fault in several scenes as the Deus ex machina saves our daring-do characters from a fate worse than death, or even worse.
Actually, stripped with extremely sharp editing, this book would make a straight forward, interesting adventure novella of 50K words or thereabouts.
June 19, 2015
At the end of WWII, a group of American medical personnel uncover a chest containing some important document. Sixty years later, members of that group are being killed off. Enter Ben Kamal and Danielle Barena who connect the killings to a massacre of a Palestinian village. The investigation is on to stop the Last Prophecy from destroying the United States.
August 18, 2011
Not impressed with this book. It took some time for me get into it and...I never really did. The plot was fairly simple that was made to be exciting by adding a lot of cliffhangers and "suspense," but the author fell short of his goal.
August 27, 2013
I thought this book was an entertaining twist on the Nostradamus prophecies. There were numerous action scenes toward the end of the story. The characters were well created and believable. I consider this story to be a good read.
June 8, 2008
This book was just ok, lot's of action but nothing really outstanding about it.
August 13, 2009
Ben & Danielle #7 -- best one yet
April 1, 2011
Thriller w/Nazis and Nostradamus
May 15, 2013
Good book! Lots of action and suspense involving historical characters and events. Jon Land does not disappoint me!
April 14, 2014
just ok
July 27, 2014
First part of the story was MUCH LESS engaging than Last half . Loved the way the story was turned on it's ear the last few pages.
January 10, 2015
Fantastic draw to world crime and the conspiracy behind it, as well the description of its repercussion. Enjoy
November 13, 2016
A good book a little unbelievable though.
March 14, 2016
Great read! Love this series!
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews