In The Club Dumas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte explored the labyrinthine world of antiquarian book dealers, spicing his tale of mystery and murder with characters straight out of Paradise Lost and The Three Musketeers. Next came The Flanders Panel, a brilliant puzzle comprised of art, chess, and untimely death whose resolution lies in a painting by a Flemish master. In The Seville Communion, Pérez-Reverte turned his sights on the tangled politics of the Roman Catholic Church as an appropriate backdrop--for murder. In his fourth novel translated into English, the Spanish writer changes centuries (if not his focus on homicide), returning to the mid-1800s to follow the exploits of Don Jaime Astarloa, the eponymous fencing master.

The year is 1866 and revolution is brewing in Spain. The corrupt Bourbon queen, Isabella II, is slowly losing her grip on power as equally corrupt exiled politicians vie to be her successor in a new republic. Against this background of political upheaval, Don Jaime goes about his business, teaching a dying art to a dwindling number of students. This is a man who resists changing times; to a friend he explains, "I have spent my whole life trying to preserve a certain idea of myself, and that is all. You have to cling to a set of values that do not depreciate with time. Everything else is the fashion of the moment, fleeting, mutable. In a word, nonsense." But then Adela de Otero--a woman with a mysterious past and an amazing talent for swordplay--comes into his life, and Don Jaime's world is turned upside down. As always, Pérez-Reverte offers literary excellence, a thumping good mystery, and fascinating insight into an arcane practice, in this case, fencing. Though the 19th-century politics in the book may resonate more with a Spanish audience than with English readers, the moral at the heart of The Fencing Master is universal: "to be honest, or at least honorable--anything, indeed, that has its roots in the word honor." In this, Don Jaime and Arturo Pérez-Reverte both succeed. --Alix Wilber


From Publishers Weekly
Spain's bestselling novelist follows three polished and erudite thrillers (The Flanders Panel; The Club Dumas; The Seville Communion) with a fourth that combines the classic art of fencing, 19th-century Spanish monarchical politics and the eternal lure of the femme fatale. Don Jaime Astarloa, aging and solitary, is Madrid's greatest fencing master, eking out a threadbare living in this age of the pistol by teaching the sons of the nobility. In the hot summer of 1868, while rumors abound in Madrid of possible insurrection and the forced abdication of Queen Isabelle II, Don Jaime is visited by a beautiful young woman calling herself Adela de Otero, who offers him double his usual fee to teach her a secret, famously difficult sword thrust. At first Don Jaime refuses to consider a woman as a student; but with her intricate knowledge of fencing and the mysterious, tiny scar at the corner of her mouth, Adela wins him over and proves to be an expert fencer, gifted, disciplined and determined. Soon she is winning Don Jaime's heart as well. Thus is set into motion a complex succession of plots and counterplots analogous to the thrust and parry of a fencing match. P?rez-Reverte is a master of lushly atmospheric suspense, and his prose is as spellbinding in the fencing gallery as it is in the arcane realm of honor and loyalty that shapes Don Jaime's world. The mysteries unravel to the final pages, as Don Jaime pursues his lifelong dream of discovering "the unstoppable thrust," not in politics, contemplation of his art or even romance, but on the floor of battle. 100,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour. (June) FYI: The Ninth Gate, the film of P?rez-Reverte's The Club Dumas, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Johnny Depp, will open in April.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Chess, antiquarian books, the Catholic ChurchAall have figured in P?rez-Reverte's richly entertaining mysteries. Now he's picked another intricate and demanding subject, fencing. There's political unrest in 1868 Madrid, but Don Jaime goes about his business as fencing master while trying to conceive of the perfect thrust. When the beautiful and mysterious Adela de Otero approaches him, asking for lessons, he at first refuses indignantly but soon discovers that she is relentlessAand already a magnificent swordswoman. It's not long before Don Jaime is in love with Adela, but shortly thereafter she is taken over by one of his aristocratic clients, Luis de Ayala. And then de Ayala is found dead, killed by the merciless two-hundred-escudo thrust that Don Jaime himself has invented and taught to just a few peopleAincluding Adela. What follows is a fine tale of political intrigue with a lot of fencing lore deftly mixed in. Figuring out the political mess behind the killer's motivations might take a reread, but this will delight anyone who enjoys swashbucklersAthough as one might expect, the book is more literate than any Hollywood film. For all mystery collections.ABarbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Walter Satterthwait
All in all, The Fencing Master is a splendid performance.


Walter Satterthwait, New York Times, June 6, 1999
The boundaries of the crime novel are largely imaginary, and good writers don't so much transcend them as ignore them. Arturo Perez-Reverte, a Spanish newspaper columnist and former television journalist whose previous books include The Flanders Panel, The Club Dumas and The Seville Communion,is one such writer...Yet Perez-Reverte is a writer who knows how to keep readers turning the pages. He has a deft way with a sward fight, and there are duels here as swashbuckling as anything in The Mask of Zorro.There are enigmatic messages in the night; there are violent confrontations; there are hired thugs. And after the final, most horrific revelations, there is a dramatic surprise of an ending.


From AudioFile
Listeners who enjoyed last year's recording of THE THIRD MAN should enjoy this as well. Like Graham Greene's novel, it thrusts an innocent man of honor--in this case, fencing master Don Jaime de Asterola--into a world of passion and betrayal. De Asterola's search for answers after the murder of one of his clients becomes a life-and-death fencing match, a theme stressed by the passages of fencing advice that follow each plot twist. Michael York conveys de Asterola's newfound passions--for love, vengeance and survival--with his own master's touch. He also draws a few laughs with the dry wit that leavens the novel. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
Another colorful novel of intrigue from accomplished Spanish author Prez-Reverte (The Seville Communion, 1998, etc.). The setting is Madrid in 1868: a time of political unrest as self-indulgent Queen Isabelle II's hold on the throne grows shaky and numerous anti-royalist and revolutionary groups jostle for advantage. At the same time, tradition reposes serenely in the virtually cloistered life of the suave Don Jaime Astarloa, an aging ``fencing master'' who supports himself by teaching his art to Madrid's nobility while planning his treatise on ``the unstoppable thrust''to be written as soon as he develops and masters this ultimate skill. A cryptic prefatory flash-forward is followed by some rather turgid (flatly translated?) exposition before Prez-Reverte efficiently places Don Jaime at the center of an exfoliating chain of intrigue whose individual developments are keyed to fencing moves and terms (``The Short Lunge,'' ``Glissade,'' etc.). A beautiful young woman, Adela de Otero, persuades the initially reluctant master to tutor her and proves surprisingly worthyin crisp, witty scenes charged with erotic tension. A marquis to whom Don Jaime introduces her is murdered under circumstances that point to Adela (who has inconveniently vanished); and a mutilated corpse that appears to be hers is dredged up from a river. A Javert-like police chief (Campillo) and a luckless journalist (C rceles) become involved, and signs both of a plot against the throne and of a murderous double agent deepen Don Jaime's panic and confusion (amusingly counterpointed by the ``eternal polemics'' exchanged among his cronies at the ironically named Caf Progreso). A climactic surprise meeting concludes with the master's serendipitous performance of that ``perfect thrust''at a decidedly opportune moment. Not quite equal to Prez-Reverte's very best, though it succeeds admirably both as a vivid picture of an unfamiliar culture and as high, sophisticated entertainment. (First printing of 100,000; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Everyone in Madrid in the torrid fall of 1868 is discussing political plots and revolution except for Don Jaime. He is a fencing master and a man of honor, an anachronism. For years he has been working on a Treatise on the Art of Fencing, the heart of which is his perfection of the unstoppable thrust.

He is approached one day by a beautiful and mysterious woman with a scar at the corner of her mouth that hints at dark violence. She asks the maestro to teach her the unstoppable thrust. Even though Doña Adela de Otero's weapons of charm and elegance are formidable, Don Jaime declines. But he is entirely unprepared for the unhurried, sure, and inexplicable movements that follow. Soon he finds himself involved in a plot that includes seduction, politics, secret documents, and murder.

Rich with the historical detail of a decaying world that agonizes-as does the art of fencing-over ideals of honor and chivalry, The Fencing Master is superb literature and an honest-to-goodness page-turner.

"The master of the intellectual thriller is not an American or British writer, but Spaniard Arturo Pérez-Reverte, one of the most creative and devilishly complex authors of the '90s." -San Francisco Examiner

SYNOPSIS

Arturo P￯﾿ﾽrez-Reverte, internationally acclaimed author of The Flanders Panel, The Flanders Panel, The Club Dumas and The Seville Communion, returns with a literary page-turner set during the political turmoil of late-19th-century Spain. While friends and countrymen argue monarchical imperatives and plot bloody revolution, the courtly and chivalrous Don Jaime Astarloa remains blissfully disinterested in worldly affairs -- preferring to devote himself to the completion of his life's work, a Treatise on the Art of Fencing. But when a beautiful and mysterious young woman with an intriguing scar at the corner of her mouth asks Don Jaime to teach her the secret of the unstoppable sword thrust, he soon finds himself unwittingly drawn into a secret plot that involves seduction, politics, blackmail, and murder.

FROM THE CRITICS

Dick Adler

Even if your interest in fencing is minimal, you should be quickly sucked in by the character of Don Jaime Astarloa, a distinguished buy slightly down-at-the-heels fencing master in his late 50's, struggling to stay afloat in Madrid in 1899...Don Jaime is the perfect hero for this story of an old world about to de destroyed; when someone compares him to Don Quixote, he retorts, "The man from La Mancha wanted to right wrongs; all I want is to be left in peace." — Chicago Tribune

Jane Bussey

Perez-Reverte likes his heroes strong, his plots complex, even almost literary, and his women a little dangerous. Perez-Reverte's trick of creating a hero with the flaws of Astraloa might have been too much in a novel written in the United States. But part of the fun of Perez- Reverte's books is that the reader does not immediately identify with the heroes. They are built outside of stereotype. Here is the true art. Perez-Reverte leads us through this intellectual thriller with the rhythm of a fencing match: thrust, parry, feint; thrust, parry feint. We follow the ploys spectators able to spot the mistakes, the opportunities for the opponent, the fatal errors. Any by the end, we care about the honorable fencing master, a dying breed, the hero described at one point as the "only honest person I know. —Miami Herald

Walter Satterthwait - The New York Times Book Review

The boundaries of the crime novel are largely imaginary, and good writers don't so much transcend them as ignore them. Arturo Perez-Reverte, a Spanish newspaper columnist and former television journalist whose previous books include "The Flanders Panel", "The Club Dumas" and "The Seville Communion," is one such writer...Yet Perez-Reverte is a writer who knows how to keep readers turning the pages. He has a deft way with a sward fight, and there are duels here as swashbuckling as anything in "The Mask of Zorro." There are enigmatic messages in the night; there are violent confrontations; there are hired thugs. And after the final, most horrific revelations, there is a dramatic surprise of an ending.

Publishers Weekly

Spain's bestselling novelist follows three polished and erudite thrillers (The Flanders Panel; The Club Dumas; The Seville Communion) with a fourth that combines the classic art of fencing, 19th-century Spanish monarchical politics and the eternal lure of the femme fatale. Don Jaime Astarloa, aging and solitary, is Madrid's greatest fencing master, eking out a threadbare living in this age of the pistol by teaching the sons of the nobility. In the hot summer of 1868, while rumors abound in Madrid of possible insurrection and the forced abdication of Queen Isabelle II, Don Jaime is visited by a beautiful young woman calling herself Adela de Otero, who offers him double his usual fee to teach her a secret, famously difficult sword thrust. At first Don Jaime refuses to consider a woman as a student; but with her intricate knowledge of fencing and the mysterious, tiny scar at the corner of her mouth, Adela wins him over and proves to be an expert fencer, gifted, disciplined and determined. Soon she is winning Don Jaime's heart as well. Thus is set into motion a complex succession of plots and counterplots analogous to the thrust and parry of a fencing match. P rez-Reverte is a master of lushly atmospheric suspense, and his prose is as spellbinding in the fencing gallery as it is in the arcane realm of honor and loyalty that shapes Don Jaime's world. The mysteries unravel to the final pages, as Don Jaime pursues his lifelong dream of discovering "the unstoppable thrust," not in politics, contemplation of his art or even romance, but on the floor of battle. 100,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour. (June) FYI: The Ninth Gate, the film of P rez-Reverte's The Club Dumas, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Johnny Depp, will open in April.

Library Journal

Chess, antiquarian books, the Catholic Church--all have figured in P rez-Reverte's richly entertaining mysteries. Now he's picked another intricate and demanding subject, fencing. There's political unrest in 1868 Madrid, but Don Jaime goes about his business as fencing master while trying to conceive of the perfect thrust. When the beautiful and mysterious Adela de Otero approaches him, asking for lessons, he at first refuses indignantly but soon discovers that she is relentless--and already a magnificent swordswoman. It's not long before Don Jaime is in love with Adela, but shortly thereafter she is taken over by one of his aristocratic clients, Luis de Ayala. And then de Ayala is found dead, killed by the merciless two-hundred-escudo thrust that Don Jaime himself has invented and taught to just a few people--including Adela. What follows is a fine tale of political intrigue with a lot of fencing lore deftly mixed in. Figuring out the political mess behind the killer's motivations might take a reread, but this will delight anyone who enjoys swashbucklers--though as one might expect, the book is more literate than any Hollywood film. For all mystery collections.--Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Read all 8 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Arturo Perez-Reverte