The Siege

October 15, 2014
Pirates; serial killings; steamy, unrequited love: Perez-Reverte (Pirates of the Levant, 2010, etc.) imbues the sensational with significance. It's 1811, and as Napoleon's army relentlessly shells the port of Cadiz, Spain, the city finds itself the target of a much more sinister presence. A shadowy figure is brutally murdering young women, and as amoral policeman Rogelio Tizon stalks this prey, he begins to realize that the murders and the French bombs are somehow intertwined. At the same time, the handsome Lolita Palma, upstanding owner of a shipping company, agrees to do business with corsair Pepe Lobo and soon finds herself drawn to his rough charms. And a mysterious taxidermist sends a secret carrier pigeon to a French captain, adding one more pin to his map of bombs. As Napoleon's war rages on, the world finds itself in a vortex of change, with science competing against faith and tradition to help create a new world order. Perez-Reverte begins with several different strands of story and weaves them into a rather impressive web. The level of detail is meticulous but also beautiful; his descriptions of the town and people of Cadiz capture colors, smells and personalities, making the page come to life, and he balances these sensory passages with dense observations about history, metaphysics, science and human nature. Whether the brutality of the murderer, and in fact of the war, is a result of "the imagination [running] out of control" or "atmospheric conditions" doesn't ultimately matter to the story. Perez-Reverte presents a chessboard on which the epic battle of science and fate becomes the story. In the end, it's about "the dark chasms of the human mind," a timeless theme if ever there was one. A genre-bending literary thriller worth the time.

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November 15, 2014
P'rez-Reverte writes two kinds of novels: richly detailed historical thrillers (The Nautical Chart, 2001) and swashbuckling adventures (Pirates of the Levant, 2010). Lately, he has been sticking to the latter, but here he combines both forms in a complex, history-drenched tale of the siege of Cdiz by the French in the early nineteenth century. The action takes place in 1812, with the port of Cdiz, nicely protected by water, remaining unconquered as Napoleon's forces sweep across Spain. P'rez-Reverte tracks multiple characters on both French and Spanish sides, focusing on two stories: the attempts of ruthless police commissioner Rogelio Tizn to find a serial killer, who is preying on young women, and the travails of businesswoman Lolita Palma to manage her dead father's shipping business in the face of the French blockade and bombing of the city. With grave misgivings, Palma agrees to fund a Spanish corsair (pirate ship) to raid French ships along the coast, and so she comes in contact with P'p' Lobo, the ship's captain, to whom she is immediately attracted. There may be a little too much going on herethe density of both the prose and the story lines can seem almost suffocating at timesbut there is no denying the author's ability to build character, evoke landscape, and communicate the crush of history on individual lives. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: P'rez-Reverte, an international best-seller and a favorite among booksellers and librarians, has not had a new book since 2010 and will attract plenty of attention with this one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2014

Even as Napoleon's armies lay siege to Cadiz in 1811, the bodies of murdered women start appearing in strange corners of the city, perhaps a code to be cracked by police commissioner Rogelio Tizon as enemy bombs become increasingly accurate. Meanwhile, Lolita Palma makes sure that her father's mercantile business thrives while unexpectedly grabbing the attention of heart-of-gold corsair Pepe Lobo. The author of literary thrillers like The Flanders Panel will bring out this story's twists while also illuminating life under siege; former war correspondent Perez-Reverte's The Painter of Battles is one of the best novels available about the costs of war.

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