''Crusader Gold'' is an archaeological adventure novel by

David Gibbins David Gibbins (born 1962) is an underwater archaeologist and a bestselling novelist. Early life Gibbins was born in 1962 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, to British parents who were academic scientists. He is related to the Victorian histori ...

. First published in 2006, it is the second book in Gibbins's Jack Howard series. It has been published in more than 20 languages and was a New York Times bestseller.

Plot summary

Following a prologue set in AD 71 when the golden menorah from the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem is locked away in Rome, the novel picks up in present-day Turkey with marine

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

Jack Howard on a hunt for ancient treasures in the harbour of

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

, formerly

Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...

. One item not among the treasures thrown into the harbour when the Crusaders pillaged the city is the menorah, and Jack soon learns from colleagues Jeremy and Maria that it may have been stolen from Constantinople by Norse warrior

Harald Hardrada Harald Sigurdsson (; – 25 September 1066), also known as Harald III of Norway and given the epithet ''Hardrada'' (; modern no, Hardråde, roughly translated as "stern counsel" or "hard ruler") in the sagas, was King of Norway from 1046 t ...

during his service to the emperor of

and taken by him on his explorations of

the New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...

. Jack goes to the monastery at

Iona Iona (; gd, Ì Chaluim Chille (IPA: �iːˈxaɫ̪ɯimˈçiʎə, sometimes simply ''Ì''; sco, Iona) is a small island in the Inner Hebrides, off the Ross of Mull on the western coast of Scotland. It is mainly known for Iona Abbey, though there ...

in Scotland to see a priest who tells him that the Nazi Ahnenerbe were on the trail of the menorah in the 1930s. The priest is found gruesomely murdered, showing that there are present-day Nazis who are shadowing them. In

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...

Jack and his friend Costas dive inside an iceberg, where they find a perfectly preserved Viking ship burial containing one of Hardrada's warriors. They go to

L'Anse aux Meadows L'Anse aux Meadows ( lit. Meadows Cove) is an archaeological site, first excavated in the 1960s, of a Norse settlement dating to approximately 1,000 years ago. The site is located on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland in the Ca ...

, the Viking site in Greenland, where further clues lead them to the Yucatán in Mexico, where Hardrada and his men had a final standoff with the Maya. After a perilous dive into a

cenote A cenote ( or ; ) is a natural pit, or sinkhole, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater. The regional term is specifically associated with the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, where cenotes were commonly used for ...

, Jack discovers the truth of Hardrada's last stand and the fate of the menorah, and he has his own final standoff with the latter-day Nazi and his henchmen who have been following him. The book ends with a chapter-length Author's Note in which Gibbins details the historical and archaeological facts behind the fiction in the novel.

External links

David Gibbins's website

References

2006 British novels British adventure novels Archaeology in popular culture Headline Publishing Group books {{2000s-adventure-novel-stub