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.

From Library Journal
Top international mystery: a hacker cracks the Vatican's security code and pleads with the Pope to save a cathedral in Seville, two of whose defenders have already met untimely deaths.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Paul Baumann
Pérez-Reverte writes with wit, narrative economy, a sharp eye for the telling detail and a feel for history. The Seville Communion is good fun, as entertaining as it often is silly.

The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Nick Owchar
Not as tightly wound as in Pérez-Reverte's past novels, the plot turns instead to a question much larger than a whodunit: What happens when faith degenerates into obsession?

From Booklist
The many readers who enjoyed the author's previous The Flanders Panel (1994) and Club Dumas (1997) will find his latest novel absolutely engrossing, and readers who ordinarily do not gravitate to thrillers could begin an appreciation of the genre right here. In a wonderfully complicated, greatly atmospheric, and delectably sophisticated narrative, Perez-Reverte sees modern technology at work in an age-old institution; specifically, a hacker sends an anonymous message to Vatican authorities by breaking into the pope's personal computer system, bringing to the Holy Father's attention the curious troubles taking place at a small church in Seville, Spain. Vatican authorities dispatch Father Lorenzo Quart of the Institute of External Affairs, whose charge is to gather information concerning the scandal that is brewing around Our Lady of the Tears Church. Not only have two people associated with the church been killed recently, the church itself faces demolition. There are certainly parties in town that would profit from its condemnation. Is the little church itself responsible for the deaths, as if it were a living being? And what people in the community have a vested interest in seeing that the church remains standing? And how is an attractive man like Father Quart supposed to remember his vow of chastity in a sensuous city like Seville? The answers to these questions provide an exciting read. Brad Hooper

From Kirkus Reviews
This superbly entertaining and intricate thriller, following close on the heels of its predecessors, The Flanders Panel (1994, not reviewed) and The Dumas Club (1997), confirms its Spanish author's growing reputation as the thinking man's Robert Ludlum. When Vatican security is breached by an unknown hacker who breaks into the Pope's personal computer, all-purpose emissary (and frre semblable, if you will, to James Bond) Father Lorenzo Quart is sent to Seville to investigate two mysterious deaths, learn the meaning of cryptic messages that importune the Pontiff to rescue a dilapidated church, Our Lady of the Tearsand also to deduce the identity of the high-tech interloper papal subordinates have dubbed ``Vespers.'' Prez-Reverte smoothly works into his unfailingly absorbing narrative a colorful parade of power-brokers and schemers, ecclesiastical and secular alike. Among them: Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz, the Pope's truculent countryman, who mourns the bygone Inquisition; bank executive Pencho Gavira, who has lost his beautiful wife Macarena to a young bullfighter and fights to keep control of a ``development coup'' that requires Our Lady to be demolished; an amusing criminal trio (who might have stepped out of the pages of Oliver Twist) comprising ``former fake lawyer'' Don Ibrahim, pass flamenco singer La Nia, and unfrocked boxer El Potro; andbest of allOur Lady's Father Priamo Ferro, ``an insubordinate astronomer priest'' whose stargazing avocation coexists uneasily with his stubborn refusal to hold onto his imperiled church. Father Lorenzo keeps encountering suspicious people, any of whom might be Vespers, as the body count rises and as ingeniously juxtaposed plots and counterplots twist toward a climax that puts Quart at the amorous mercy of the seductive Macarena and sees Father Ferro arrested for a murder to which he has perhaps falsely confessed. The identity of Vespers, and a stunning disclosure about Father Ferro saved for the very last sentence, bring this literate whodunit to a deliciously satisfying conclusion. Reading Prez-Reverte is one of the most choice pleasures contemporary fiction offers. (First printing of 75,000; $100,000 ad/promo; film rights to Canal Plus and Iberoamericana) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Her name is Our Lady of the Tears. She's a small, crumbling Baroque church in the heart of Seville, Spain. And at least one person -- a computer hacker nicknamed Vespers -- believes that she kills to defend herself. In Arturo Perez-Reverte's stylish and entertaining The Seville Communion, Rome sends handsome Father Lorenzo Quart to investigate. He meets a feisty parish priest, a beautiful aristocrat, an ambitious banker, and three of the most touching, wonderfully ineffectual crooks to ever dabble in a life of crime. There are mysteries as well, from another death at the church to the secrets of the human heart.

—Nancy Pate

ANNOTATION

The Seville CommunionT is an elegant, genre-transcending thriller by Arturo P￯﾿ﾽrez-Reverte, the author of The Flanders Panel ,The Club Dumas , and the soon-to-be-released The Fencing MasterT . "In Spain, in Seville, there is a place where merchants are threatening the house of God and where a small seventeenth-century church, neglected by the power of the Church and the lay authorities, kills to defend itself." When a hacker known only as "Vespers" cracks the Vatican firewall and leaves this inflammatory message on the pope's personal computer, Father Lorenzo Quart of the Holy See's Institute of External Affairs is swiftly dispatched to investigate. But, once in Spain, Quart soon finds himself caught between the powerful developers who have a stake in the Baroque ruin, an Andalusian beauty, and his loyalty to the Vatican and his own vows.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A hacker cracks Vatican security and sends an urgent plea directly to the Pope: Save Our Lady of the Tears. The crumbling Baroque church, located in the heart of Seville, is slated for demolition, and two of its defenders have recently died. Accidents - or murders? The Vatican promptly dispatches Father Lorenzo Quart, their worldly and enormously attractive emissary, to investigate the situation and track down the hacker, known to the Vatican only as Vespers. Father Quart's search for Vespers leads him to Father Priamo Ferro, the coarse and zealous parish priest, who has the full devotion of his small flock; Sister Gris Marsala, a former nun from California who is determined to restore the church; Pencho Gavira, the ambitious young vice-chairman of the Cartujano Bank; his estranged wife, Macarena, a perfect Andalusian beauty whose aristocratic family is closely linked to the church's history; Macarena's mother, the Duchess of El Nuevo Extremo, an elegant insomniac with a taste for Coca-Cola; and Honorato Bonafe, a tabloid reporter bent on getting the dirt on everyone. Father Quart is slowly seduced by the splendor of Seville - and the beauty of Macarena. As time runs out on the church, he is caught between powerful developers who have a stake in Our Lady of the Tears and his loyalty to the Vatican and his own vows.

SYNOPSIS

The Seville CommunionT is an elegant, genre-transcending thriller by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, the author of The Flanders Panel ,The Club Dumas , and the soon-to-be-released The Fencing MasterT . "In Spain, in Seville, there is a place where merchants are threatening the house of God and where a small seventeenth-century church, neglected by the power of the Church and the lay authorities, kills to defend itself." When a hacker known only as "Vespers" cracks the Vatican firewall and leaves this inflammatory message on the pope's personal computer, Father Lorenzo Quart of the Holy See's Institute of External Affairs is swiftly dispatched to investigate. But, once in Spain, Quart soon finds himself caught between the powerful developers who have a stake in the Baroque ruin, an Andalusian beauty, and his loyalty to the Vatican and his own vows.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Mysterious, deadly conflicts between history and modernity drive Spanish author Prez-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 Affairsa sort of Vatican CIAis 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 therein apparent accidentsas 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, Prez-Reverte's characters capture the imagination, and his dramatic Seville seduces his protagonist and readers alike.

Paul Baumann

Perez-Reverte writes with wit, narrative economy, a sharp eye for the telling detail and a feel for history. "The Seville Communion" is good fun. -- Paul Baumann, The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

This superbly entertaining and intricate thriller, following close on the heels of its predecessors, The Flanders Panel (1994, not reviewed) and The Dumas Club (1997), confirms its Spanish author's growing reputation as the thinking man's Robert Ludlum. When Vatican security is breached by an unknown hacker who breaks into the Pope's personal computer, all-purpose emissary (and fr￯﾿ﾽre semblable, if you will, to James Bond) Father Lorenzo Quart is sent to Seville to investigate two mysterious deaths, learn the meaning of cryptic messages that importune the Pontiff to rescue a dilapidated church, Our Lady of the Tearsþand also to deduce the identity of the high-tech interloper papal subordinates have dubbed "Vespers." P￯﾿ﾽrez-Reverte smoothly works into his unfailingly absorbing narrative a colorful parade of power-brokers and schemers, ecclesiastical and secular alike. Among them: Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz, the Pope's truculent countryman, who mourns the bygone Inquisition; bank executive Pencho Gavira, who has lost his beautiful wife Macarena to a young bullfighter and fights to keep control of a "development coup" that requires Our Lady to be demolished; an amusing criminal trio (who might have stepped out of the pages of Oliver Twist) comprising "former fake lawyer" Don Ibrahim, pass￯﾿ﾽ flamenco singer La Ni￯﾿ﾽa, and unfrocked boxer El Potro; andþbest of allþOur Lady's Father Priamo Ferro, "an insubordinate astronomer priest" whose stargazing avocation coexists uneasily with his stubborn refusal to hold onto his imperiled church. Father Lorenzo keeps encountering suspicious people, any of whom might be Vespers, as the body count rises and as ingeniouslyjuxtaposed plots and counterplots twist toward a climax that puts Quart at the amorous mercy of the seductive Macarena and sees Father Ferro arrested for a murder to which he has perhaps falsely confessed. The identity of Vespers, and a stunning disclosure about Father Ferro saved for the very last sentence, bring this literate whodunit to a deliciously satisfying conclusion. Reading P￯﾿ﾽrez-Reverte is one of the most choice pleasures contemporary fiction offers.