Rating: 
Summary: Average for Perez-Reverte
Review: I've read all of Perez-Reverte's books and this one falls somewhere in the 'fair-to-midlin' range. It's not as dark as "Club Dumas" which is still my favorite. Perez-Reverte writes what is being termed "literary mysteries." I think his last two attempts (Seville Communion and this) have failed to live up to that role. If you like this author then stay with him, I know I will. If you're looking to begin reading Perez-Reverte then start with "The Flanders Panel" or "Club Dumas."
Rating: 
Summary: Lush, literary suspense
Review: Manual Coy is happiest when the nearest solid ground is ten miles behind him. Sailing has been his life; he is adrift on dry land when his Merchant Marine license is removed after a marine accident occurs during his watch.
Wandering the streets of Barcelona, he ends up at an auction of nautical objects. Coy's interest is piqued when two bidders engage in a fierce battle over a century-old atlas. He is especially interested in one of the bidders, a stunningly attractive woman who possesses an aura of fierce determination.
Shortly after the auction, Coy stumbles across the two bidders in the street. The man ' later revealed to be Nino Palermo ' acts threateningly, so Coy intervenes, though he is neither a brave nor a violent man. Thus he meets the beautiful and intriguing Tánger Soto and becomes embroiled in her quest ' the search for the Dei Gloria, a Jesuit ship that sank in the Mediterranean in the mid-1700s.
Tánger beguiles Coy. He wants to count her freckles. He is out of his depth with her, he knows, but ' like a swimmer caught in a riptide ' he cannot help himself. Tánger dribbles out information, never telling more than necessary to keep Coy hooked. Coy, an expert navigator learned in the ancient ways of reckoning, is familiar with the vagaries of 18th century techniques of specifying marine location. Tánger has the exact latitude and longitude at which the Dei Gloria sank, but those numbers meant something different in 1767 and the duo sets out on a scholarly mission to translate them into modern values.
All the while, they must deal with rival Palermo, a man famous for plundering other marine excavations, and his lethal assistant Horacio Kiskoros, a knife-wielding Argentinean dwarf. Palermo warns Coy about Tánger and tries to entice him to become a double agent.
Coy, though not intellectual, is well read and regards his life through literary references, all of them nautical: Melville and Joseph Conrad. He's a jazz aficionado. His life's soundtrack is the music of Charlie Bird, Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk.
He is also familiar with 'The Maltese Falcon,' and knows how similar his situation is to that Hammett classic, rife with betrayal and double-dealing. Author Arturo Pérez-Reverte is also aware of the similarities, casting Palermo as the Fatman from the movie version, complete with halting, occasionally explosive, speech patterns and slimy nature.
It takes over half the book for anyone to get wet, so 'The Nautical Chart' is only partly a seafaring adventure. Pérez-Reverte takes his time, building suspense as Coy gets in deeper over his head, suspicious of Tánger's motives but unable to extricate himself from her. She is the siren upon whose rocks he is destined to crash, it seems.
Even in translation (from the original Spanish), Pérez-Reverte's prose sings. This is literary adventure at its finest. The author takes long paragraphs to paint setting and emotion, something many modern writers eschew. His indulgence creates a lush and lavish novel that proceeds at its own pace, luxuriating in detail.
If this novel had been published in North America, editors would probably have tried to cut or condense huge sections of the first half. Thankfully this did not happen. 'The Nautical Chart' is like a Merchant-Ivory movie, fully immersed in mood, setting and character. The story carries Coy, Tánger, Palermo and the others along, deliberately and surely toward their inevitable confrontation over the wreck of the Dei Gloria as surely as Sam Spade, Cairo, the Fatman and Bridget would end up meeting around the table in front of the Maltese Falcon.
Rating: 
Summary: THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF
Review: As a mystery writer with my debut novel in its initial release, I genuinely enjoyed Arturo Perez-Reverte's THE NAUTICAL CHART. In many ways, Perez-Reverte's latest novel is a modernized take on the MALTESE FALCON. Manuel Coy, a sailor drifting aimlessly, attends an auction where he witnesses Tanger Soto, a beautiful blonde working for a Madrid museum, win the bidding for a 17th Century atlas that may reveal the location of Dei Gloria, a legendary Jesuit ship sunk in 1767 by pirates seeking its priceless cargo of emeralds. A ruthless contemporary band of crooked salvaging pirates are also seeking the ship for their far less noble motives. Coy enlists on Tanger's side, and a romance develops amid the danger as the various characters pursue the sunken treasure. I recommend this book highly.
Rating:
Summary: Unlike His Other Work 3.5 Stars
Review: Mr. Perez Reverte's previous books have always maintained a level of tension throughout the unfolding mystery. He has always brought well-planned and complex tales that revolved around great literature, great art, or even the art of classic sport, as he did with, "The Fencing Master". He always has piqued the curiosity of the inquisitive reader from the outset of his tale, and while sharing pieces of the outcome as the story progressed; he never pulled the curtain entirely back until the very end. "The Nautical Chart", is a very good story, however the author takes too long to tell his tale, and while he provides an ending that unfolds to the very end, unlike his other works this one can be seen clearly if not completely well before the close.Throughout the book there is a great amount of detail regarding the operation of 18th century sailing vessels. As the reader progresses with the story there is no way of knowing how critical this information may be. The frustration arises as only those readers with very specialized knowledge of sailing and its terminology will be able to follow the reconstruction of the tales within the tale. I don't see why a few drawings of the craft in question could not have been provided. The detail would have enhanced the read, and kept the pace more brisk as those without the knowledge would not feel left out, and wonder how much they were missing. The main players are hard to like as well, as for the most part they loathe one another. One is particularly annoying as he seems to go through his days confirming his and everyone else's low expectations of him, and he catalogues it all with acronyms. There just was not as much substance and depth to these characters as the author has delivered in the past. Virtually all are driven by the same base motive, and even that is hard to get involved with. I love this author's work, however of the novels he has written to date, this is the one I favor the least. I certainly will once again pick up his next work, and I look forward to the tales that are of the caliber of his first four novels.
Rating: 
Summary: tedious
Review: On average, I read 2-3 books a week, but I've been trying to get through this mess for a month now and am only half finished. I normally like Perez-Reverte...especially Club Dumas and the Flanders Panel, and I was looking for another such literary romp. I don't know if the new translator is inept or if the original material is really this hopeless, but it isn't doing anything to brighten the darkest days of winter. I find that I could not possibly care less if the protagonists find the sunken ship or any meaning to their self-centered lives. I almost always finish the books I start, but I'll be making an exception for this drivel.
Rating:
Summary: Is the Treasure Worth the Risk?
Review: Coy was the first mate on a ship that went down and though it wasn't his fault, he's had his seaman's license suspended for two years, so he's adrift on the land when he wanders into a maritime auction in Barcelona where he sees Tanger Soto, a beautiful woman, outbid the furious, pony-tailed Nino Palermo, the proprietor of a maritime salvage operation and a man to be reckoned with, for a two-hundred-year-old nautical chart.
Tanger is a curator at Madrid's Naval Museum and has just acquired the chart used by the Jesuits on their ship the Del Gloria, which was sunk by pirates off the Spanish coast in 1767. There was treasure aboard, or so she tells Coy, who throws in with her against Palermo and his diminutive, shadowy Argentinian henchman Kiskoros in the search to find it.
However finding the sunken ship is not an easy task, Coy and Tanger have to decipher documents that are over two centuries old, estimate where the ship went down, figure out how to get down to her and did I mention that it's against the law in Spain to make off with sunken treasure, so they have the authorities to worry about as well, along with Palermo and Kiskoros. This all combines to make an excellent read and to top it off Perez-Reverte has thrown in enough historical detail to authenticate his tale, a tale told in such a way that you find yourself tasting the salty air the hunters seek the Del Gloria.
Rating:
Summary: Good but Flawed
Review: Good read. The characters are a bit thin and predictable, but it's fun.
Rating: 
Summary: Detailed but not engaging
Review: I'm traditionally not a big fan of literary-type novels, which always seem to be written as a vehicle for the ego of the author rather than for the enjoyment of the reader. "The Nautical Chart" is a good example of this. The story is based on template plot with a minor twist at the end; there are no real surprises and no real drama. I found I had nothing invested in any of the characters, because there was nothing to sympathize with - they are each irrational and shallow, undeveloped and contradictory. The protagonist, Coy, for example, seems to be able to analyse the minutiae of every subtle gesture or turn of phrase in a conversation, and yet will explode in a fit of rage unexpectedly and for no good reason.
Dialogue is the soul of any good story character, but what little dialogue there is here is uninspired and constantly interrupted by the unrelenting analytical commentary. In addition, Perez-Reverte often deprecates conversation in favour of narrative explaining what is being said, which gets the job done but sadly denies us any further character insights.
I did find that Perez-Reverte's style can be quite poetic in places, if overly verbose, but I felt the words to ideas ratio was poor - a limited selection of observations re-described many different ways. One could describe the story as heavily introspective, focussed intently inward as if the author cares little for the experience of the reader. If you want lit novels with bite, try Jose Saramago; still verbose, but some fresh plot ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Good, and Almost Great
Review: A fun story of modern treasure hunters looking for an 18th century ship full of emeralds off the coast of Spain. Perez-Reverte has done his homework and packs in lots of fun nautical and historical details. Lovers of sea stories will enjoy. He's an intelligent writer and doesn't underestimate his reader. On the other hand, the prose tends to be a bit flabby. With long paragraphs in which, quite literally, the same sentence can be rephrased and repeated three or four times. Ideas (particularly about the personalities of the main characters and about the sea) can be repackaged and rewritten a half a dozen times. The author (or translator) has inexplicably fallen in love with the word "chimera", using it over and over. The writing is often self-conscious, and late in the book, the "narrator" suddenly introduces himself and interferes in the plot, though he admits that he knew nothing about the characters and didn't meet them until late in the game -- making a reader wonder how he knew the information he ostensibly narrates early on. The characters, despite the long passages devoted to drawing them out, still come across as a bit thin and undeveloped. The reason is that they aren't exposed to many different situations, so readers can't see how they respond to the range of experiences in a real person's life. Finally, the ending is a bit of a disappointment. Predictable --no twists here-- and over in a flash.
So, this is hardly the perfect novel, but it's fun and engaging and written for the educated reader.
Rating:
Summary: What can I say? I liked it.
Review: I almost feel guily for the fact that I very much enjoyed this book. As I was reading it, I had a nagging sense pulling at me that it simply was not up to the author's standards, and I knew that if I thought hard about it, I would figure out why. But I kept turning the pages and kept eating it up.
On reflection, there's a lot not to like about this book. The protaganist is not particularly likeable. I wanted to like him, but he kept doing stuff that made it hard for me. Why, for example, did he seem to want to keep beating people up? It didn't seem consistent with his character. And why should I care about him at all when the other human who seems to motivate virtually all of his behavior, which I don't care for in the first place, is basically reprehensible and actually doesn't even sound nearly as physically attractive as he seems to find her? Enough with her stinking freckles already. And what's up with the odd sadistic little dwarf? Was it necessary to make him so odd to drive the plot? And why does the circumstances of the death of a dog seem to motivate so much activity in the novel, and if it does, shouldn't he have been developed a little more? One minute he's sitting on a guy's lap licking his hand and then poof he's dead, and then our unlikeable hero is losing his mind because of that fact, and then later, loses his mind again when he learns a little secret about the timing of the dog's death. And what on earth am I to make of the whole back story of the shipwreck that led to the events in the novel? The details, while mildly interesting, don't seem to have very much to do with what's going on in the present day in the novel, but I'm treated to about 100 pages about how the whole thing went down. Why? And what's with all the Moby Dick references? Coy is not Ishmael, nobody seems particularly Ahab-like, there's no analog for the big white whale, and that which eveyone is searching for is eventually found. So why all the Moby references? The author's obsession to convince us that he had spent many months researching things nautical comes off as contrived and not natural; like a guy who has just learned some French and so goes out of his way to speak it in your presence where it's not necessary. (I get it, I get it, Arturo, there are no ropes on a boat. Lines, dang it, lines!) And how is it that our narrator, a bit player who wasn't involved in 97 percent of the events described in the novel, has such a vivid understanding of all the grisly details, down to the exact nature and character of the fluids that mark the lovemaking that dominates the second half of the novel.
So, as you can see, these are real problems. And not negligible ones.
But, dang it if I still didn't really really like this book. Not sure I can explain why. I liked the places it took me. I ultimately liked the theme of the guy who was competent and secure at sea but was a complete mess on land. I got into the detective aspect of the search and the nautical calculations -- and this is plainly the area where this author is at his finest. The most likeable character -- the Pilot -- was very refreshing, albeit in a I-won't-develop-this-guy-very-much-because-heaven-forbid-you-should-actually-like-someone-in-this-novel kind of way.
The Nautical Chart for me was almost the exact opposite of The Club Dumas. With that book, as I was reading it, I was in the back of my mind simply amazed at the skill of the author, his complete control, the mastery of the subject and backstory and the weaving of a complicated, multi-track tale. But, at the end of the day, I didn't really care for the Club Dumas and was unsatisfied at the end (uh oh, now I'm going to get some "unhelpfuls" for sure). With this book, I was constantly aware of its problems as I was reading, but read the final page with a big smile on my face.
What can I say? There it is.
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