- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (Mar 18 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0151002835
- ISBN-13: 978-0151002832
- Product Dimensions: 23.5 x 16 x 3.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 671 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #908,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Spain's Arturo Perez-Reverte continues his string of comfortably old-fashioned, modestly intellectual thrillers with a touching and suspenseful story of faith and duty, set in the timeless and enchanting city of Seville. "In Seville different histories were superimposed and interdependent," he writes, aided by Sonia Soto's seamless translation. "A rosary stringing together time, blood and prayers in different languages beneath a blue sky and wise sun that leveled everything over the centuries. Stone survivors that could still be heard. You just had to forget for a moment the camcorders, postcards, coaches full of tourists and cheeky young girls, and put your ear to the stones and listen." As in his previous surprise bestsellers--The Club Dumas and The Flanders Panel, both available in paperback--Perez-Reverte takes a supposedly cool observer and turns the person into a hot-blooded participant in the action. In The Seville Communion it's Father Lorenzo Quart, who works for an investigative branch of the Vatican that is referred to by an angry, upstaged Archbishop of Seville as "you and your mafiosi in Rome, playing God's police." Father Quart, a very attractive man with prematurely gray hair cropped short, wears expensive suits and has to fight off the women who test his vows of celibacy. His toughest challenge is a breathtaking, titled beauty named Macarena, whose banker husband is at the center of a plot to tear down a historic church. Two people have already been killed because of the intrigue, and more violence threatens as Father Quart is pursued by a trio of ineptly dangerous villains, straight out of Bogart's Beat the Devil, through the gorgeous streets of a city to die for.
From Publishers Weekly
Mysterious, deadly conflicts between history and modernity drive Spanish author Perez-Reverte's latest literate thriller (after The Club Dumas, 1997), an engaging tale of love, greed, faith, betrayal and murder set in contemporary Seville. When a computer hacker penetrates Vatican security to send an urgent, anonymous plea to the pope, Father Lorenzo Quart of the church's Institute of External Affairs?a sort of Vatican CIA?is dispatched to investigate. The hacker's message concerns a troubled 17th-century church in Seville, Our Lady of the Tears. Apparently, the dilapidated church "kills to defend itself." It stands in the way of a huge real estate deal, and two people have died there?in apparent accidents?as they brought pressure to condemn it. A handsome dandy who wears expensive black suits instead of a cassock and knows how to conduct himself in a fistfight, Quart prides himself on his discipline but soon finds it heavily taxed as he's embroiled with a bellicose, elderly parish priest, a blue-jeaned American nun and a stunning Andalusian duchess intent on saving the church from the businessmen (including her husband) who threaten it. Despite some unconvincing plotting and a few heavy-handed moments, Perez-Reverte's characters capture the imagination, and his dramatic Seville seduces his protagonist and readers alike. 75,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; film rights to Canal Plus and Iberoamericana. (Apr.) FYI: The Seville Communion is appearing simultaneously with Vintage's paperback issue of The Club Dumas.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The hacker broke into the central Vatican system eleven minutes before midnight. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The hacker broke into the central Vatican system eleven minutes before midnight. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible characterisation,
By
This review is from: The Seville Communion (Paperback)
What a disappointment. Most of the main characters, aside from Priamo and the investigator, are entirely one dimensional and give you the sense of an author who filled out a character development worksheet (ok, this character wears silver bracelets, crochets a blanket for her long-gone trosseau, and has a spit curl) and then plugs in the appropriate details by formula over and over again. I finished the book and could list only two or three superficial details I knew about all three of the co-conspirators, the duchess, the banker, etc. The first few chapters were interesting but the promise quickly dissipated, to the point where I was skipping who paragraphs in the last chapter in an attempt to just finish the thing. NOT what you'd expect a reader to do in a suspense novel, but Arturo Perez-Reverte just doesn't make you care.I give it a two rather than a one star rating only because the character of Father Priamo is relatively well drawn and interesting. But it's hard to hold a book just on the basis of one character. This reads like the work of a mediocre college student.
3.0 out of 5 stars
An entertaining read,
By
This review is from: The Seville Communion (Paperback)
As one of Perez-Reverte's earlier novels, the characters are not quite as well fleshed out as they are in his later books. On it's own however, it is quite the entertaining read. The main character, Quart, comes across as a priest who doesn't think of himself as a priest so much as a 'soldier of the church' or a modern incarnation of a knight templar. As a result the reader experiences Quart's inner turmoil through his eyes as an unusual priest whose conscience seems to be lacking (or rather buried) so he can perform the 'dirtier' work of the church. Although not an inquisitor, he comes across more like a jaded detective focused only on his duty. Perez-Reverte's writing style is enchanting and draws you into the story creating rich visualizations of the church, it's parishoners, and it's custodians. Perhaps not as good as his later works, it still remains an intriguing story in which a careful eye can discern the emergence of a writer whose style is emerging and becoming more refined. A great read for anyone interested in church mysteries or a mystery set in modern Seville in Spain.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not a mystery book,
By "hotrodsv" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Seville Communion (Hardcover)
I bought the book because I enjoyed Flanders Panel. But this book is not a mystery novel. The whole plot really revolves around the church (Our Lady of Tears) that is bound to be demolished but is being defended by the parish priest and a rich duchess who has some rights to the church property. The subplot is a hacker who got into the Vatican computer and left messages to the pope asking for help to preserve the said church. At the end, we finally found the hacker called Vespers but it is more of a confession rather than by detective work. There are some funny moments with three characters who are being paid to destroy the church.
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