The Seville Communion [Paperback]

Arturo Perez-Reverte (Author), Sonia Soto (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 7, 2004

A“diabolically good” hacker puts a message on the pope’s computer, pleading for him to save a seventeenth-century Spanish church—a church that is killing to defend itself.Although Our Lady of the Tears is but a crumbling baroque building in the heart of Seville, it is also the center of a multilayered mystery—one that will force ecclesiastical sleuth Father Lorenzo Quart to question his loyalty, his vow of chastity, and his faith itself.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 375 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (June 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156029812
• ISBN-13: 978-0156029810
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (117 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #662,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, October 27, 2003

By 

Diana F. Von Behren "reneofc" (Kenner, LA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Seville Communion (Paperback)

When an ingenious hacker infiltrates the Vatican's computer system and leaves a message on the Pope's desktop imploring the Vatican to save the soon-to-be demolished Our Lady of the Tears church in Seville, the Vatican deploys its version of a special operations expert in the formidable personage of Fr. Lorenzo Quart. Quart is handsome, rugged and epitomizes the business end of the Vatican while promoting a no-nonsense vision of the Church in Rome that exactly opposes the cozy sanctuary feel of Our Lady of the Tears. The congregation of the old and crumbling church believe that the building itself has an uncanny sense of survival; two murders or accidents have already taken place; the victims, people involved in the church's scheduled demolition. World-toughened Quart believes no such thing, he attributes the church's strange staying power to its motley crew of supporters: an old renegade pastor, his young computer-savy associate, a art-restoring nun from California, a willful yet beautiful aristocrat and her old-fashioned mother with a fetish for Coca Cola. The opposition is just as real--a jilted banker amd his hilarious stoogelike henchmen who envision a more self-serving and lucrative edifice on the Our Lady of Tears property.

The plot however is secondary in this most wonderful of character studies. As Quart discovers the different truths that center around the old church, he ekes out the meaning that the Church has not only for its individual protectors, but also for himself. Like any truely good piece of literature the main character undergoes some metamorphosis; Quart's is profound and well worth the read through the stirring backdrop of beautiful Seville.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I find the "Seville Communion" incompariable when looked at in the same context as "The Flanders Panel" and "Club Dumas". While I liked these other novels, I was moved by the Seville Communion and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys their characters made of flesh and blood, not just stereotypical ideals.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Even his worst works are better that others bests, August 12, 2004

By 

McMurdock "colmcmurdock" (East Timor) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Seville Communion (Paperback)

In my opinion The Seville Communion (La piel del tambor) is the worst of Perez-Reverte novels. Nevertheless it deserves 4 stars because Mr. Arturo is playing in a different league and even his failures contain countless moments of magic.

The main handicap of the novel is his main character, Father Quart. The super-attactive, strong, charming priest working for a kind of Vatican Secret Service lacks credibility and his romance with the aristocratic lady is somehow predictable (remember the atractive symbology professor of The Da Vinci Code? It is the same kind of dull character).

So, how can a novel stand the weakness of the main character? Response: thanks to a fantastic pleiade of secondary characters: The three villians are simply wonderful, the old priest is touching, the banker is charming.

And then you have some pearls of Reverte's mythology, this peculiar mixture of History and adventure (better, this underlining of the adventures that History hides): pirates in the Cuban War, haunted barroque churches... this is the Perez-Reverte we love and this is what he is good at: treasures, war, puzzles and riddles. Reverte, leave the religious-love stories for those that lack your talent to tell a tale. The descriptions of Seville, its magic and charm, are also a good element of the book

In any case, it would be worth to read this novel if only for two magic moments: the conversation of the two priests about Astronomy and the hilarious moment were the vilians are "set on fire".

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The mystery is secondary, October 22, 2002

By 

Angela Richardson (Windsor, Ontario) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Seville Communion (Paperback)

Ostensibly, this is the story of a hacker breaking into the Vatican computer system and appealing to the Pope to save a small, neighbourhood church in Seville from being shut down. Father Lorenzo Quart is sent by the Vatican to Seville to uncover just who this hacker, who goes by the code name Vespers, really is.

But really, the mystery is incidental. For me, the book's raison d'etre wasn't really to discover who Vespers was, but to present the reader with vividly drawn characters and situations. The scenes that portrayed the slowly unfolding relationship between Quart and Maccarena, or the funny-sad trio of would-be criminals, or Don Priamo, the aged priest who would sacrifice all for his simple faith were what kept me reading.

I will definitely read more by Perez-Reverte.