May 1565: From their Turkish shores, Mustapha Pasha and the vast army of Suleiman the Magnificent set forth to conquer Malta. The defenders of Malta are The Knights of St John the Baptist, also known as The Religion. They are the ultimate enemy of the Ottoman Empire.

The author of the legendary Green River Rising, Tim Willocks, is back, this time with a novel called The Religion which is based in 1565 Malta. The Religion can be enjoyed by those who love reading a good epic story about one of the bloodiest yet finest moments in Maltese history, as well as by history buffs. Masterfully plotted scenarios with story-telling laced with smart dialogue and sweeping action at its best, The Religion takes the reader 442 years back in time to relive the Great Siege spanning the summer of 1565. Read with today’s mind, it could serve up some serious lessons in tolerance and the banality of war.

The main character is Martin Tannhauser, the son of a Saxon blacksmith who becomes an unwitting hero. Not only is he kidnapped by Muslim raiders, who whisk him away to Sicily, but once there he forges away from the family trade by becoming a famous and very successful arms dealer. In the course of this prosperity, he moves in circles previously unknown to him and is courted and seduced by Contessa Carla La Penautier. This young widow needs to find her long-lost abandoned son, and Tannhauser is recruited to do the detective legwork on that cold case.

In the meantime, the lost boy’s father, Ludovico Ludovici, who happens to be a deadly inquisitor monk, is in Malta because he soon wants Malta to be under the political and religious auspices of the Papacy. Ludovici is a nasty character, filled with vitriol – even more villainous than the nasty papal soldiers in The Da Vinci Code – and works it with a grace becoming only a Tony Soprano-type (to use a contemporary film character).

Tannhauser accepts the challenge trying to win three ways: find the missing child, take down his evil father and win Carla’s heart. Of course, since there is a war going on this is no easy task. This apparently is the first of several instalments in which Tannhauser will feature as a great hero with a dark side riddled by moral dilemmas.

Born in Stalybridge, Cheshire in 1957, and presently living in Ireland, Tim Willocks studied medicine at University College Hospital Medical School. He practised medicine until 2003, specialising mainly in psychiatry and addiction medicine. He is the author of three previous novels: Bad City Blues, Green River Rising and Blood Stained Kings. His novels have been translated into 15 languages.

Willocks is a novelist and screenwriter with a serious interest in Shotokan karate (he is a First Dan black belt). He co-founded a theatre company that performed Christopher Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and says that this production is what led him to The Great Siege of 1565, and thus to The Religion.

As a screenwriter, he has been commissioned by every major studio and has worked with some of the finest directors in Hollywood, including Steven Spielberg, Curtis Hanson, Jerry Zucker and Alan J. Pakula. He has produced three movies: Sin, directed by Michael Stevens and starring Gary Oldman, Bad City Blues starring Dennis Hopper, and Amy Foster (based on the Conran story) starring Sir Ian McKellan, Rachel Weisz and Kathy Bates.

Willocks also wrote An Unfinished Journey, a film portrait of the American Century for the Millennium Eve celebration in Washington DC, which was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Mary Angelou, Ossie Davies and President Bill Clinton.

Amazingly vivid, brilliantly written, completely fascinating and entirely unputdownable, The Religion re-ignites the pleasures of reading discovered in novels such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Gruesome and bloody, and yet surprisingly romantic, the plot flows seamlessly from beginning to end.

Just a suggestion: on these hot summer nights, one may even drive down to Birgu and read this book there on the bastions or in the square. It’s a different and worthwhile experience.

The author will be in Malta between this Sunday, 1 July and Tuesday, 3 July. He will be attending book signings on Sunday at 11am at Agenda Bookshop, at the Departures Lounge of Malta international Airport and at 12.30pm at Agenda Bookshop at Valletta Waterfront. At 6.30pm he will be at Chaucer’s in Bay Street. On Monday he will be at Agenda Bookshop at the Embassy Complex and at Sapienza, both in Valletta, at 10am and 11am respectively, while at 6pm he will be at Trading Post in Sliema. At 10.30am on Tuesday, Tim Willocks will be at Agenda in Bugibba.

In the afternoon, he will be at Swan Bookshop, Bookworm Bookshop and Bargate Bookshop in Gozo at 4pm, 5pm and 6pm respectively.