The Seville Communion » (Bargain)

ARTURO P+REZ-REVERTE is an internationally acclaimed author whose books have been translated into nineteen languages in thirty countries and have sold more than three million copies worldwide. He was born in 1951 in Spain, where he still lives.

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.

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.