Rating: 
Summary: steady and haunting
Review: I admit, my interest took a while to build. Once finished,though I was sad. The book is haunting with excellent descriptions of the heroine's history,motivation and culture. The parallel story lines-one from the protagonist,another from a reporter investigating her history are very complimentary. Finally, the rich description of Mexican and Spanish cultures,as pertaining to narco-trafficking was fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: A gripping book, the best Perez-Reverte I've read
Review: I have read Perez-Reverte's "The Fencing Master" and "The
Nautical Chart". I consider these books intellectual noir,
whose plot revolves, in part, around a feme fatal. The
beautiful faithless women in these book are one dimensional.
Even in "The Nautical Chart", where the book revolves around
the beautiful Tanger, we never really get a feeling for who
she is. Coy, the man who loves her, spends the book trying
to understand her. But in the end Coy only has a collection
of observations that never really add up to a whole.Having read two books by Perez-Reverte where the women were
beautiful and dangerous characters without full dimension
I wondered if Perez-Reverte could actually write about a
three dimensional women. The answer has been provided in
"The Queen of the South". The central character is Teresa, a complex woman with a
complex history. By the end of the book I felt that
Perez-Reverte has created a character that could have lived beyond the pages of the book. Before becoming a novelist
Perez-Reverte was a new reporter and it shows in this book.
When I finished reading the last page, I had the strange
feeling that the events recounted really could have happened
exactly as outlined. This was reinforced by the fact that
Perez-Reverte has incorporated some actual people into his
story. Teresa as a dark character and by the end of
the book she has blood on her hands. Perhaps because
Perez-Reverte provides such an intimate portrait of Teresa
I was unable to see her as evil, despite some of her actions.
We see Teresa grow from a scared young woman to full adulthood
into a sophisticated woman. The story of "The Queen of the South" is told by a reporter
and the detail in which the world of drug running is
described in amazing detail. Like Fredrick Forsyth's "Odessa
File", one is reading a novelization of actual reality.
The story is gripping. From the start we feel that Teresa is living on borrowed time. There is nothing of the slow
buildup that exists in "The Fencing Master". This book
is a page turner from the start.
Rating:
Summary: "This is not happening to me, she thought"
Review: I remember reading an article in the New York Times a little while ago in which a writer said that he decided whether or not to read a book based on the first sentence. He would continue reading only if he was hooked by this small sample. When I started reading this novel I thought to myself that Perez-Reverte must be of similar beliefs. The start of this work is so strong that it is hard to put it down after reading its first sentence, "The telephone rang, and she knew she was going to die".
The phone call Teresa Mendoza receives is a signal that Guero Davila, her lover, is dead and that she needs to run away. Thus starts a spectacular adventure full of twists and turns that will have the reader looking forward to the next development every step of the way. Guero was a drug dealer that was betraying his bosses, so when they discovered him, he was murdered and they proceeded to go after Teresa.
An anonymous writer who is doing research and writing a book on the life of this mysterious woman tells part of the story. As usual, Perez-Reverte goes back and forth in the story, mixing elements from different time periods relating to the main character's life. In this case, we soon learn that the writer meets Teresa twelve years after Guero's death when she is involved in a difficult situation with the Federales in Culiacan, Mexico. Therefore, the author is letting us know that the ending may be in line with his usual pattern: bitter-sweet.
After that interlude, Perez-Reverte goes back to the moment in which Teresa is forced to run and we are taken along in a magnificent roller-coaster ride that will show us how this character changes and evolves, fighting with her destiny and trying to survive. The author's great writing skills help in making us feel as if we were right in the middle of the action, and we find ourselves rooting for a woman that ends up involved in the world of drugs. Perez-Reverte also does a very good job in describing settings and people in places like Mexico and the US, immersing the reader in the ambiance of these locations.
As to our main character, one thing is certain, Teresa learned her lesson from her experience with Guero, and now she decides to take control of her life: "She was never going to wait for anybody again, watching telenovelas in some house in some city somewhere". This is the essence behind this main character, and whether you like the book or not will depend on how much you like Teresa, a strong and focused woman, who takes life as it was dealt to her and who has a significant amount of inner conflicts. As far as I am concerned, this character has enough interest by itself so as to make this one of the best books of 2004.
Rating: 
Summary: A Dud
Review: I wish I had read the negative reviews here before purchasing this book. The language is very tacky and the story boring. I gave up after about 100 pages and threw the book in the trash. I have read and enjoyed every other Arturo Perez-Reverte book and wonder if this one was ghost-written....
Rating: 
Summary: Another disappointed fan...
Review: I'm a huge fan of Perez-Reverte generally, but - like a couple of previous reviewers - am very disappointed with this one so far. I was warned that it's very slow to get going and I'm only on Pg 100 but I think I'm going to have to put this down for a while and try again later. Somehow it manages to be both sleazy and deadly dull. And why do all the characters and many of the bars and restaurants need so many different names and nicknames? It may be authentic, but it doesn't move the narrative forward and sure makes for tedious reading. The characters, including the heroine Theresa, seem flat, unreal and unattractive. Perez-Reverte has failed to breathe life into any of them. He does paint a vivid picture of the world of drug trafficking but that isn't enough to sustain this peculiarly lifeless story. If I change my mind when I come back and finish the book, I'll amend my review!
Rating:
Summary: I'm disappointed, Arturo
Review: I've been your adoring fan all through your other classy, elegant books, which are among my favorite fiction---especially "The Seville Communion." But "Queen of the South" is too much a departure, for me, from your usual stylish novels. I'm surprised at the rave reviews of many readers. I and my more discriminating reading friends don't understand why you wasted your talents on writing a book that borders on pulp trash about a sleazy woman in the sleazy drug world. There are already too many authors churning out pulp, disposable fiction. Did you just want to do something different? Okay, you've done that now, so please return to the Perez-Reverte that I knew and loved...and I'll return to adoring you.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to believe this is Perez-reverte
Review: I've read all his previously translated novels, and felt they all had something in commmon...a sense, or aura, of mystery. Who are these people, what is really going on? At the heart of each of his previous novels were questions you could not wait to have answered. This novel read as a straightforward story. There was no mystery, you always knew exactly what was going on. To me, this was a disapointment. The story itself was fine, and as all his books are, very well written. There was just nothing special about it. I gave it three stars because it was beautifully written, but for Perez-Reverte, 3 stars is a major disappointment. If you read this, do not expect a typical story by him, expect something much more mainstream, something any of hundreds of authors could write.
Rating:
Summary: Please go back to the "arcane"
Review: If no one had told me what I was reading, I would never have guessed that the author of this *sensationally* violent trash could be the same person who wrote Seville Communion, Flanders Panel, Fencing Master, etc. I only hope that it is a "stage" and that he returns to what Booklist called his "arcane" writing --- write what you know, not what you research.
Rating: 
Summary: An Updated Godfather Story
Review: In Queen of the South, Arturo Perez Reverte has moved from the rarified world of antique book sellers (Club Dumas), art historians,(Flanders Panel) and duelists (Fencing Master) to the gritty world of international drug trafficking. With this novel, Perez Reverte capitalizes in our fascination with crime. Not crime as practiced by the legions of petty criminals but high crime as practiced by international drug smugglers and mafia dons.
The novel's hero, Teresa Mendoza begins her story as the girl friend of a small time Mexican narco. With his murder, she is forced to flee Mexico. She works her way up from a barkeep in Spanish Morocco to the "Queen of the South", the most important smuggler of drugs in the Mediterranean. All this, in only twelve years.
Perez Reverte is an old fashioned story teller in the 19th Century tradition of Dumas or Hugo. He is very talented writer and uses all of his consierable skill to keep this story moving. There are plenty of well written scenes that get the heart beating and the hairs on the back of the neck to stand up. If I were rating this story on sheer writing talent, the Queen of the South would get five plus stars.
However, what keeps the Queen of the South from being a really good novel is the sense that the story is not plausable. For this type of story to work, Perez Reverte should take his cue from Mexico's Narco Corridos. At the end of a ballad by Los Tigres del Norte, you can always turn to the person sitting next to you and say, "Dicen que fue cierto" or They say it really happened.
The first two thirds of the novel are terrific. Perez Reverte has the feel of Sinaloa and the Straights of Gibralter just right. He started to lose me once Teresa begins her meteoric rise to the top of the drug trade. It is as though she goes from being a three dimensional character to a stereotype of a drug lord. It is as though Perez Reverte lost his story telling nerve.
In the greatest novel of this genre "The Godfather", Mario Puzo understood the importance of taking his time to tell the story of the rise of Vito Corleone. Like Teresa Mendoza, Vito Corleone must flee his homeland to escape assasins. Through cunning, hard work and violence, he rises from obscurity to become the head of a crime organization. Don Corleone's rise to power takes decades and his wholly believable. He is a believable character from start to finish. The Godfather in both its novel and movie form will be around for generations. While a good read, The Queen of the South's destiny is to be an ephemeral novel. Unfortunately, Perez Reverte did not have the nerve to make this a great novel.
Rating:
Summary: insightful look at drug trafficking
Review: Mexican drug-running pilot Guero Davila warned his girlfriend that if the cell phone he gave her ever rings, she must flee because he is dead and she is next. When the call came, the voice calmly told her that "They wasted Guero", killed his cousin, and she was high on the clean up list. Listening to the voice of Guero in her head, the panicked Teresa Mendoza runs for her life. Teresa knows that they will find her eventually so she must change from the innocent upbeat girl who a coke delivery pilot rescued from poverty to a major player. She chooses Spain to start out, but she is raped and incarcerated for her efforts. However, over the next dozen years, Teresa learns and begins to rise through the ranks until she becomes Narco's QUEEN OF THE SOUTH with a confrontation awaiting her with the Don of Mexican druglords. Though the men in Teresa's life are evanescent and never fully developed yet somehow seem fascinating (what if), readers receive an insightful look at drug trafficking through the exploits of the terrific protagonist. The story line actually plays out along two plots with the main theme being the rise to power of Teresa; the other subplot focuses on a reporter doing research into Teresa's life by interviewing felons and law enforcement officials who have known her. Thus, the audience obtains a second and at times a third perspective on events that shaped this intriguing anti-heroine. This strong novel falls a bit flat due to the weak support cast, but Arturo Pérez-Reverte still provides an intriguing thriller.
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