
Is it really possible that you have stumbled across a secret lost for centuries? A secret that that could change the world order?
From the bustling gold rush and the streets of Melbourne in 1864 to the ancient city of Edinburgh in Scotland, three friends flee from a secret society out for revenge, only to find themselves at the centre of a centuries-old plot and a ‘stop at nothing’ foe.
Erroll Rait, Major Gask and Mary Mitchell find themselves pitted against the full might of the British Empire’s secret services and a centuries-old Knights Templar Lodge of the Freemasons with a secret to guard and an explosive plan that could change history. Murder, kidnap, torture, death stalk their trail. Gask and Rait alone have the key to avert a constitutional crisis and the violent conflict that would follow. But can they survive to unlock the puzzle?
Immerse yourself in the 1860s with deeply researched real background events and an intermingling with real characters of the day. This is the third book in the Major Gask series – the introductory novel was a five-star read by Reader’s Choice Book Awards.
Researching the Knights Templar and the Masons for my new Victorian mystery novel
My new novel, The Case of the Beth-El Stone – the third in my Rait and Gask detective series – is fictional, although the Knights Templar and the Templar Masons did and do exist and had a significant presence in Scotland, as I discovered when undertaking research.
The Order of the Temple was founded in 1118 in Jerusalem after the city had been taken from the Saracens. This brought pilgrims to the Holy Land from all over Christendom. The Knights Templar were founded by Hugo de Payens and seven other knights to protect these pilgrims. Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, granted them quarters on the site traditionally considered to be that of Solomon’s Temple and, as a result, they came to be known as “Knights of the Temple”.

In 1128, de Payens met King David I in Scotland to seek support for the Templars and was granted land where they established a Preceptory at Balantrodoch, now called Temple, a village near Roslin outside Edinburgh. The Templars swore a vow of poverty as individuals, but this did not stop them as an Order from controlling wealth or receiving donations and they began to acquire lands and money. The Templars built Preceptories all over Europe and, to circumvent robbers on their journey, pilgrims began to deposit their wealth in a local Templar house and receive a credit which could be redeemed at any other Templar house, for example, once they reached the Holy Land. This was the beginning of banking, and the Templar credit notes were the first cheques.
In 1291, the last stronghold of the Crusaders on the mainland of Palestine – the city of Acre – fell to the Saracens and the Knights Templar relocated to Cyprus, its original mission no longer valid. In 1307, the king of France, Philip the Fair, conniving with pope Clement V, arrested most of the Templars in France, claiming that the Order was guilty of heresy but in truth using this as an excuse to seize Templar wealth. Every European country, at the behest of the Pope followed suit except Portugal and Scotland.
Stories persisted that some of the Templars escaped the purge and sailed with their treasure to Portugal and/or Scotland, which I describe in my book. In the 18th century, a branch of Freemasonry revived the link with the Templars when the Lodge of Scoon and Perth conferred the “six sundry steps of Masonry” on the Office-bearers of St. Stephens Lodge in Edinburgh: “Past the Chair, Excellent and Super Excellent Mason, Arch and Royal Arch Mason and Knights of Malta”.
Less than one year later, in October 1779, Archibald, Earl of Eglintoune, the Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge at Kilwinning, issued a charter for a lodge in Dublin by name of the “High Knight Templars of Ireland Lodge” which in turn issued charters for Encampments in Scotland, some of which are still active under the Great Priory of Scotland.
In 1805 one such charter was issued to a Knights Templar group in Edinburgh under the title of the “Edinburgh Encampment No. 31” which became the “Grand Assembly of Knights Templar in Edinburgh”.
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Case-Beth-el-Stone-Cases-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0DCHM4K22/
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Beth-el-Stone-Cases-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0DCHM4K22
Meet David Cairns of Finavon

David Cairns of Finavon was, until recently, a technology entrepreneur. He has lived and worked on four continents and, after many years making his home in the Perthshire highlands, these days makes he stays on the Gold Coast with his Australian wife. He is the author of The Helots’ Tale series – Downfall and Redemption – and the Gask and Rait Mysteries series. His latest novel The Case of the Wandering Corpse (Finavon Press, £9.99, is available from all good book retailers) www.CairnsofFinavon.com
Visit David on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDavidCairns