Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate

By Lazlo Ferran

Why is a notorious religious cult of assassins keeping him alive?

In this nail-biting, paranormal thriller, the hero's teenage daughter is taken in a blood-thirsty murder by a giant winged serpent; her body is left mysteriously shriveled and crushed. A former WWII MI6 agent, our hero is suspected of the crime by the police and his divorcing wife.

With strange powers of foresight he goes on the run to clear his name. He has only one friend - a historian and member of the modern Knights Hospitaller but with his help he embarks on a white-knuckle ride to salvation.

In Paris, Georgina, smart, sexy witch servant of the mysterious Catholic assassin sect Concilium Putus Visum seduces him during his quest for the secret weapon of the Cathars. If he can solve a puzzling set of clues to find the weapon, he might kill the monster and save his marriage.

But why do the assassins and the vampire snakes seem to be protecting him? Why is his grandfather's body no longer where it should be; in his grave? What supernatural secret about the family was the old man trying to reveal to him before he died?

Lovers of Dan Brown's evocative mix of mystery and history will love this Occult Thriller - a dark and powerful, nerve-shredding tale, which deftly combines aspects of a crime thriller with those of the occult and historical.

From the author:
My own family's roots, uncovered gradually over ten years of concerted research, had led me to one Guillaume, a Chevalier (Knight) in 13th Century Languedoc, France. He was my earliest ancestor. Simultaneously, I had been pursuing a theological interest in the Cathars; first through reading a number of books by Henry Lincoln, and later an interest in Monségur and the Rennes-le-Château, near where the lost treasure of the Cathars is said to be hidden. The Cathars were an ancient sect who came to prominence and were ruthlessly persecuted by the Catholics in the 1300s, mainly in and around the Languedoc Region of France. They believed that the Christian god was really Rex Mundi, or 'God of Earth' and that he was an illusion created by dark forces, while the real God remains hidden somewhere outside Earth.

These two areas of interest came together for me when I discovered that one of my ancestors was cast out by the Catholic Church and prosecuted for some unknown violation. This resulted in him having to pay the church an annual tithe of a man's weight in wheat. What his misdemeanour was, I cannot say, but he was certainly very wealthy and his daughter married well, so it must have been a personal crime against the Church. Was he a heretic or Cathar, even though officially they had all been killed in Monségur 200 years before? I may never know but it started a train of thought which led to me deciding to write a book about heresy in France.

A year before I started this work, I read both Dan Brown and Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. These books were certainly an influence on me. Like brown, I have been fascinated for many years by the rumour or myth that Mary went to France and that Jesus had a descendant. Like him and many others, I speculate that the Cathars did in fact smuggle a great treasure out of Monségur castle. I also speculate on what that treasure might be.

The themes of blood, death, eroticism, sex and transcendence are all things that I desire in a good novel. My influences were Kate Bush, The Mission, Lord Byron, John Keats (The Eve of St. Agnes is a particularly favourite poem of mine) and, to some extent ,Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Sex and death are the themes that everyone seems attracted to. As a consequence, I couldn't resist a climax to my novel that took place in one of the world's greatest Gothic masterpieces. But you will have to read the novel to find out where.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lazlo Ferran
• Release date: Oct 31, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453655634

Lazlo Ferran

Lazlo Ferran: Exploring the Landscapes of Truth. Educated near Oxford, during English author Lazlo Ferran's extraordinary life, he has been an aeronautical engineering student, dispatch rider, graphic designer, full-time busker, guitarist and singer, recording two albums. Having grown up in rural Buckinghamshire Lazlo says: "The beautiful Chiltern Hills offered the ideal playground for a child's mind, in contrast to the ultra-strict education system of Bucks." Brought up as a Buddhist, he has travelled widely, surviving a student uprising in Athens and living for a while in Cairo, just after Sadat's assassination. Later, he spent some time in Central Asia and was only a few blocks away from gunfire during an attempt to storm the government buildings of Bishkek in 2006. He has a keen interest in theologies and philosophies of the Far East, Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe. After a long and successful career within the science industry, Lazlo Ferran left to concentrate on writing, to continue exploring the landscapes of truth.