Rating: 
Summary: Great book, suffers a bit in translation...
Review: Reverte continues his wonderful series of eclectic mysteries, moving the genre into teritories rarely trod upon. Here Father Quart, sort of a James Bond type for the Vatican, is dispatched to investigate a series of computer break-ins by a hacker from Seville. The plot is solid and intriguing, the mystery held (literally) until the last sentence. My only complaint is that, not being Spanish, the character's names seemed confusingly similar to me. Also the Femme Fatale being name Macarena brought back memories of that annoying dance... Still, Highly Recommended. Father Quart is one of the most intriguing new characters I've found in years.
Rating: 
Summary: great book!
Review: The main character of this book is a catholic priest/spy for the vatican. Set in Seville, he is to discover who is sending messages to the pope via the Web regarding a church to be demolished and some unfortunate characters caught in the middle of it. The plot is rich, the character development is excellent. This is one of the best books so far this year. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: I can only hope this book was better in the original Spanish
Review: I must have missed something that others got from this book. I found this book BORING! The characters, especially the comic relief trio, were incredibly inane. It was obvious who was the killer and the hacker about 25 pages into the book. I am sorry that I wasted electricity powering a light to read this book by. Upon finishing this book I quite cheerfully hurled it into the garbage.
Rating:
Summary: A great idea, a great background, a good story, an ok book
Review: Intrigue in the Vatican. A priest goes to Seville, Spain and gets caught up in the beauty of its culture and its women. This could be a true story. Except, the book spends a little too much time on details and not enough on suspense and plot. This book will not keep you awake late at night, it won't put you to sleep on sleepless nights either, though. It's a good book, a solid suspense novel, but it must have lost something of its extraordinary in the translation. I recommend you read the book, but skip the boring parts. It gets a 7 for orginiality, scenery and idea.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I read the Spanish version and it was great. Anybody who thinks that this book is "silly" or not "intellectual", has not a clue of the life at the end of the 20th century. This is a story about lonely fighters who still fight, without caring about their world falling apart.
Rating:
Summary: A good intrigue but not as good as the Flanders panels...
Review: It is a modern detective novel which keeps the suspense until the very last page. The action is in Sevilla and more particularly in a special area of the city. Lorenzo Quart, the priest, gives a new face to the catholic church.
I did enjoy particularly the passage when the three guys led by an old Cuban fanatic fight in a boat. It is funny to see how Perez Reverte criticises the world of Spanish business through the characters.Read it youll have a great moment !
Rating:
Summary: A Very Nice Thriller
Review: I read the Spanish version and it was very good. I still think his best book is either the Fencing Master or Club Dumas. However, this one is a close second. An unforgetable cast and an impressive background make this a very entertaining read.
Rating: 
Summary: Good.
Review: I read this book in Spanish, after reading both Flanders Panel and The Club Dumas. Stated in the abstract, the plot is quite promising: a hacker breaks into the Pope's personal computer to alert him to the fact that an old church in Seville is quite literally killing people. A special vatican investigator -- James Bond in a priestly collar -- is duly dispatched to look into the matter. At an operational level, however, the book tends to fizzle. For starters, the plot is not as accesible to those who are not familiar with Spanish folklore -- particularly a type of musical entertainment (copla) that has not been in vogue even in Spain for several decades. Some aspects of the book strike the reader as a takeoff on Morris West (a lot of detail on the internal workings of the Vatican) -- but if you like that sort of writing you are better off with The Shoes of the Fisherman or The Devil's Advocate. While the book is well written, and while it can by and large hold the reader's attention, it is not really a "mystery" and is unlikely to satisfy those who are seeking more page-turning plots in the tradition of The Flanders Panel and The Club Dumas
Rating:
Summary: Paints a pretty picture, but I can't give it 5
Review: I imagine I could have used the phrase "engaging portrait," rather than "pretty picture," but based on most reviews I've stumbled upon, there is already enough condescention and pomposity in here by wannabe literary elitists. Suffice it to say that, as in "The Flanders Panel," this novel does a beautiful job of describing the sights and sounds of its locations, and in turn creating an atmosphere. The only disappointments I found were ones of my own personal preference (i.e. - how Father Quart's inner struggle turned out, the comedy relief trio). I would not recommend any of the author's books to anyone who does not like spending time reading about the atmosphere, instead prefering their mysteries to focus on the matter at hand. If that was the case in this book, it would have been roughly 28 pages long and you wouldn't have needed half of the characters. As others have written, I was left wanting to know a little more about what would become of Quart, but don't think any sort of sequel is necessary. The mystery drew me in, the major characters were compelling, and you put the book down feeling certain you are being given an honest glimpse at the way certain aspects of society operate.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible characterisation
Review: What a disappointment. Most of the main characters, aside from Priamo and the investigator, are entirely one dimensional and give you the sense of an author who filled out a character development worksheet (ok, this character wears silver bracelets, crochets a blanket for her long-gone trosseau, and has a spit curl) and then plugs in the appropriate details by formula over and over again. I finished the book and could list only two or three superficial details I knew about all three of the co-conspirators, the duchess, the banker, etc. The first few chapters were interesting but the promise quickly dissipated, to the point where I was skipping who paragraphs in the last chapter in an attempt to just finish the thing. NOT what you'd expect a reader to do in a suspense novel, but Arturo Perez-Reverte just doesn't make you care.I give it a two rather than a one star rating only because the character of Father Priamo is relatively well drawn and interesting. But it's hard to hold a book just on the basis of one character. This reads like the work of a mediocre college student.
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