The Seville Communion - Softcover

Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099453967 ISBN 13: 9780099453963

Publisher: Vintage/Ebury (a Division of Random, 1997

Synopsis

Murderous goings-on in a tiny church draw the Vatican into the dark heart of Seville. A hacker gets into the Pope's personal computer to leave a warning about mysterious deaths in a small church in Seville that is threatened with demolition. Father Quart, a suave Vatican troubleshooter is sent to investigate. Experience has taught him to deal with enemies of the Church in all their guises, but nothing has prepared him for the stubborn faith of Father Ferro, or the appeal of the lovely Macarena Bruner, desperate to save the church and her ancestors from her ex-husband, the ruthless banker Pencho Gavira. As Quart is drawn into an intrigue as labyrinthine as the streets of Seville, soon more than his vocation is in danger.

About this title

Review:

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.

Book Description:

Published in paperback by Harcourt, 1999, 0-15-600639-1
Published in hardcover by Harcourt, 1998, 0-15-100283-5

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage/Ebury (a Division of Random
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0099453967
• ISBN 13: 9780099453963
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352