Seville Communion

Book, 1969

Status

Available

Call number

863.64

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Publisher Unknown (1969)

Description

A hacker breaks into the pope's computer, asking him to save from demolition a 17th century church in Seville. The Vatican dispatches handsome Father Lorenzo Quart who quickly attracts the attention of an aristocratic beauty embroiled in the affair. By the author of The Flanders Panel.

Media reviews

NY Times

Seville is known for its barbers, its Gypsy temptresses, its Latin lovers; for the tomb (if not the actual body) of Christopher Columbus, bullfights, orange blossoms, Holy Week processions and an extraordinary mix of Arab, Baroque and Renaissance architecture. Julius Caesar conquered it; the Roman

Emperors Hadrian and Trajan were born nearby; the Vandals, Visigoths, Moors and crusaders grudgingly passed it on to one another. It was the site of the Spanish Inquisition's first auto-da-fe, but, most important, the home port of Spain's bounteous New World empire. ''Dramatic extravagance,'' V. S. Pritchett once observed, ''is in the Sevillian nature.'' And dramatic extravagance is what the former journalist Arturo Perez-Reverte provides in ''The Seville Communion,'' his third thriller (following ''The Flanders Panel'' and ''The Club Dumas'') to be published in English and the second to be translated by Sonia Soto. Perez-Reverte writes with wit, narrative economy, a sharp eye for the telling detail and a feel for history. ''The Seville Communion'' is good fun, as entertaining as it often is silly. . . . Almost all of Perez-Reverte's characters are plausible, but usually as types. His vivid descriptions of the city, like his stories of Seville's outsize romantic and heroic past, are more resonant. Good at making the reader want answers, he is less good at giving satisfying ones. Finally, motive and explanation are too stagy and, more disappointing, the murderer is too peripheral to the psychological heart of the story. There's also a lot of facile talk about splendid buildings and elaborate ritual as a ''means of entrancing the masses'' because ''naked faith can't be sustained.'' Much of this seems filched from the Cliffs Notes to Dostoyevsky's ''Grand Inquisitor.'' Still, you'd have to be a remarkably faithless reader not to want to visit Seville after finishing this flavorful confection.

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Kirkus Reviews

"Reading Perez-Reverte is one of the most choice pleasures contemporary fiction offers."

User reviews

LibraryThing member southernbooklady

I suppose that most of us have about a one in a million chance of ever speaking directly to the Pope. The Holy Father, spiritual leader of million of people, is also one of the most closely guarded personages on the planet. But it is the 21st century, and even the Pope has a computer. In

Perez-Reverte's novel, someone has used this fact to beat the odds. It is eleven minutes before midnight (Vespers) when a hacker breaks into the Vatican computer system and leaves a plea upon the Holy Father's personal computer: Holy Father, In Seville there is a place where merchants are threatening the house of God and where a small 17th century church kills to defend itself…

It is the kind of plea which neither the Pope nor Vatican Security can ignore. Which is how Father Lorenzo Quart came to be sent to Seville to find both the church and the author of the message. Quart arrives to find that the church in question is Our Lady of the Tears, and already two people have died mysteriously within its crumbling, sacred walls.
Perez-Reverte has been a kind of literary secret for the last few years. A Spanish writer, whose works have only recently been available in this country, he is the kind of author that reading people love to push onto their friends. "You won't ever have heard of this guy, but you have to read this! This guy is great!" His first book was The Flanders Panel, an intricate and delicious murder mystery where the first victim died in the 15th century and the murderer plays a mean game of chess. His second book, The Club Dumas, follows a shadowy character into the world of rare books, where the price of a first edition is as much as your life is worth.

Like his earlier books, The Seville Communion is a modern murder investigation with a historical mystery behind it. Quart discovers that Our Lady of the Tears is the sight of an eighteenth century love affair gone awry. A noble lady falls in love with a pirate, but her family disapproves. Her desperate letters to him are intercepted. His to her are destroyed, and she goes slowly mad waiting for word from him. The lady lies buried in the crypt of the church, but it is said that her ghost still walks.
Quart is too skeptical by nature to believe in fairy tales, although this one touches him. But there is no denying that there is some sort of force at work in the church. Already two people have died under circumstances that police can only describe as "tragic accidents". A railing gave way at just the wrong time, causing one man to fall to his death. A piece of the damaged plaster ceiling came loose, and crashed down upon the head of another. Our Lady of the Tears has been slated for condemnation. Was it just coincidence that the two people killed were assessing how best to bring the church down?
There is a banker in who would like to put up luxury condos in its place. He has the support of the Archbishop of Seville. The precarious existence of the church is defended by only a few- a nun who would like to restore it to its former glory, the parish priest who feels that the spiritual needs of his flock come before the possibilities of real estate, and a woman who goes to mass every Sunday- a descendent of the mad lady who lies in the crypt. None of these suspects seem to be the likely source of Vespers. Certainly none of them were in the church when the ceiling came down.

As Father Quart delves into the mystery surrounding the church, he realizes why someone felt the need to call upon the Pope for help. The struggle for Our Lady of the Tears is about more than a million-dollar real estate deal (the diocese in Seville actually stands to gain from the sale). It is a struggle about the nature of faith. Quart, whose worldly nature had somewhat jaded his idea of faith, finds himself faced with humble people whose faith in God carries more force than all of the wheeling and dealing of all of the bankers in the city. Could it truly be that God wants the church to stand?

The Seville Communion is one of those great books with many levels to it. It is more than a murder mystery and more than a thriller about the machinations of Vatican politics. The Seville Communion questions the role of the Church in society and the role of the spiritual in our lives. Like Father Quart, the reader finds that the struggle for Our Lady of the Tears is struggle for our soul.

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LibraryThing member JBD1

I think this was my second favorite Perez-Reverte (after "Club Dumas"). A suspenseful, fascinating, and rich read. As the blurb on the back of my copy from the "Denver Post" notes, "this is a book to be savored."

LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom

Strange things are happening in an old church in Seville, including accidents and the M word (murder). At the same time, someone is hacking into the Pope's computer. A priest who is a high mucky-muck in the Vatican is sent to investigate...and what he finds out and how the situation is resolved is

the meat of this story.
Extremely well written; I love this author and have all of his books. Recommended

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LibraryThing member mmh166

I enjoyed this book and its main character all the way up to the final chapter. Disappointing ending.

LibraryThing member LisaLynne

I'm a big fan of Arturo Perez-Reverte and I really wanted to love this book. In fact, I did love it - right up until the closing paragraphs. Better to have kept the hacker a secret than to spoil a fabulous book with a cheesy reveal.

He has a tremendous talent for bringing a place to life - I could

close my eyes and picture the streets and restaurants and quiet spaces of the city he described. The action was intense and the characters were interesting. The involvement of the Church and the differing agendas of the priests involved made for a compelling cast. If only I could un-read the last chapter.

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LibraryThing member dougwood57

`The Seville Communion' is the fourth book by Arturo Perez-Reverte that I've read in recent months, but the first non-Captain Alatriste work. The book opens with a modern twist: a hacker has intruded into the Vatican's inner sanctum - and left a message on the Pope's own PC! Two deaths have

occurred at a small church slated for razing and redevelopment in Seville and someone is trying to get the Pope's attention. The Vatican dispatches Father Lorenzo Quart, a priest with smoking good looks, to investigate.

Creating a sense of place is one of Perez-Reverte's strong suits and he takes the reader to the heart of ancient Andalucian Seville such as its famed cathedral with the Giralda, the Muslim bell tower. The author also creates interesting and distinctive characters (including some long dead) that make the reader care about the story. A trio of quasi-comic quasi-criminals who could have jumped right off the pages of Elmore Leonard provide an element of humor.

Quart pursues the mystery somewhat distractedly, as a local beauty presents a challenge to his vow of abstinence. Are the deaths really murders or the accidents the authorities presume? Caused by ghosts? Powerful banking and bishopric interests align against the old church. An anachronistic priest, an idiosyncratic nun, an old duchess and her beautiful daughter defend it. An oily journalist lurks persistently in the background.

A good story with some nice twists at the end, excellent character development, and a strong sense of time and place make `The Seville Communion' well worth a read.

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LibraryThing member chise

Okay, anyhow a little bit boring. I expected way more! Imho, the author spends too much time on describing unimportant persons. And I don't like the end. It's a little bit like "Hmm, I need something big at the end, a firework, some more surprises". Unfortunately for me they didn't fit into the

story, it didn't fit into the behavior of the characters....

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LibraryThing member kerns222

A Spanish three stooges trio have a run-in with a reformed James Bond priest with a vow of chastity and non-violence (He was successful with the first.) They all tangle with bad-assed bankers, a do good out-of-habit nun, a hi-class femme fatale and a priest from the middle ages. All in Seville,

while eating tapas, drinking sherry and watching gentrification raging through the picturebook barrio of Santa Cruz .

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LibraryThing member Pennydart

A handsome priest is sent by the Vatican to investigate mysterious goings-on in Seville, after a hacker breaks into the Pope’s personal computer and issues a warning that a church there “kills to defend itself.” The Church, “Our Lady of Tears” is slated for demolition, and two people

involved in its potential closing have already been killed. Perez-Reverte provides long—I’d say overlong—descriptions both of his characters and of Seville, including, for example, list of the names of 27 bars in one section of the city. I read this book because it was on the list for my book-club. Maybe I’m just not enough of a mystery-lover, but it did nothing for me.

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LibraryThing member John

I like Perez-Reverte and this is the third of his books that I have read, starting with The Flanders Panel and followed by The Club Dumas (97:15). Each is a mystery, but mysteries written with elegance, interesting characters, and interesting themes and ruminations on the bigger questions of life.

The first centred on finding the identity of a murderer through a chess moves received in the mail while trying at the same time to decipher the significance of the depiction of a chess game in a Flanders panel. The second dealt with a search for an ancient copy of a book by Alexander Dumas and was complicated with the influence of ancient texts on alchemy. The Seville Communion takes another tact altogether, and begins with a computer hacker breaking into the private files of the Pope, in Rome, to warn him of strange goings-on, and death in a small church in Seville. Father Lorenzo Quart, from the internal security forces of the Vatican, is sent to investigate in Seville and to try to find the identity of the hacker. Father Quart runs into quite a cast of characters: Sister Gris Marsala, a restoration specialist (the church is falling down) from California; Father Ferrao, the simple, devoted, blunt, and even coarse parish priest determined to keep the church open (its site is the prize for real estate speculators); Pencho Gavira, a senior, ambitious bank official much tied up with trying to get the church property; his beautiful wife, Macarena; and her mother, a Duchess from another age; Pencho's assistant who gambles much more than he can afford to and runs afoul of moneylenders; and a wonderful comic trio of inept henchmen (although one is a woman) hired by the assistant to follow Quart and eventually to kidnap Ferrao. Quart is viewed with suspicion by all sides as the meddlesome envoy from Rome who just wants to smooth everything over in order to avoid any embarrassment to the Vatican, or as someone who might thwart the schemes being hatched to obtain the church property. At first unsympathetic, and a "good soldier" who is doing as ordered, Quart comes to understand the passions that drive Ferrao and Gris to keep the church open, and to maintain the link and the solace that it represents for the poor people of the parish. Perez-Reverte's books do not lead to cataclysmic climaxes, indeed the endings almost seem anti-climatic, but getting there is so pleasurable because he writes so well and so intelligently and he ponders bigger questions such as, in this book, the meaning of faith and service and honesty with oneself and with others.

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LibraryThing member jason.goodwin

I'm rather a fool for Perez-Reverte - this is the first one I read, and I did enjoy the will-he/won't-he suspense, as the priest struggles to keep his vows against the charms of a beautiful woman!

LibraryThing member VictorTrevor

This fast-paced thriller is set in Seville and provides a good sense of place. The main protagonists is Father Lorenzo Quart, a priest with a difference: suave, well-dressed and not averse to a little physical persuasion. He is sent by the Vatican to investigate a difficult priest in a difficult

church, which is also the target of some unscrupulous property developers. The plot is just about believable and ensures that you keep wanting to turn the page.

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LibraryThing member sogamonk

Have read other books by this author and found them of interest. this book,however loses in the transalation.
Too many characters with difficult names to remember,and too descriptuve of said characters. Story was interesting,but confusing. Could not finish it.

LibraryThing member jessiejluna

If you like modern stories about priests and tensions in Catholicism you will like this book. Goes back to why you find Perez-Reverte on the mystery shelves. The main character is warm and interesting and wrapped up in something way bigger than what he was meant to find. Takes place in Spain.

LibraryThing member Lukerik

This book begins as an exercise in cynicism. Right up at the front you have that declaration that the characters are imaginary, intended, I think, to get you to suspend your suspension of disbelief. At one point one of the characters refers to others as characters in a story. The characters are

all, at least partly stereotypes, the three villains being a case in point. The novel itself is so noirist that the author seems to be making a cynical point about how an entire novel can be constructed out of entirely unoriginal elements. The orange trees of Seville are described at one point as "obligatory": even the city is something fatalistically determined.

All very cerebral, and I should stress that the author never lets any of this get in the way of a damn good story.

Then, beginning really with the drum skin speech at the end of chapter VIII he really starts to explore the human consequences of living in such a world and at times he touches on things that are really quite beautiful.

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LibraryThing member BooksForDinner

I like Perez-Reverte. I'm always leery about reading translations and then saying "I Love This Author!", cause who knows?

However, his stories are usually interesting and cleverly plotted. Fun.

LibraryThing member Cygnus555

Energetic and engaging.

LibraryThing member wickenden

It's an interesting story of the vatican, intrigue and murder.

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