Some years ago, I bought this book because an Islington Waterstones manager (or someone similar) mentioned that it was selling really well in a column in The Guardian or Independent. I obviously decided that this was a really cool and trendy book to be reading, went out and got a copy, and then thought better of reading it.
Now I’d hate you to think that I’d be so shallow as to have to read whatever’s cool in Islington. This is obviously not the case, since a closer examination of the book suggests that I bought it in 1998 or 1999. Not exactly top of the pile then. For some reason, I turned to it last week.
It’s a thriller set amongst bankers and clergy in Seville, with the investigating “officer” being a representative of the Pope, and all the politics that includes. It’s not a bad book at all – quite intelligent really. There are the comic characters, and although our “hero” is not necessarily the most likeable guy, he does mellow a bit. And typically, there’s a femme fatale for him to get involved with.
Arturo Perez-Reverte seems to be a pretty popular author across Europe, and of course his books would never make the best-sellers in the UK since he appears in translation, and the only books that sell in translation here are classics. I might give some of his other books a read at some point (hopefully it won’t be another five years), since there are quite a few available, and people say awfully nice things about them on Amazon.