October 6, 2008
Pearce's solid fifth pre-WWI historical to feature Sandor Seymour of Special Branch (after 2007's A Dead Man in Tangier
) takes the Scotland Yard detective to Barcelona, Spain, to crack a two-year-old cold case—the death, while in a Spanish prison, of an English businessman, Sam Lockhart. Lockhart was arrested during the bloody riots that erupted in Barcelona in 1910 after reserve troops refused orders to serve in Spanish Morocco. Seymour's assignment enables him to reunite with Chantale de Lissac, his half-Arab, half-French romantic interest, who uses her people skills to help him learn more about the hidden personal and political passions that may have led to Lockhart's murder. As usual, Pearce is more concerned with—and more successful at—bringing his chosen milieu to life than stumping the reader with a puzzle. Fans of the author's Gareth Owen series (The Mark of the Pasha
, etc.) will note similarities between Chantale and Owen's independent-minded Egyptian girlfriend-turned-wife.
December 15, 2008
The fifth outing to feature Sandor Seymour, the multilingual Scotland Yard detective inevitably dispatched to a foreign city to solve a diplomatically delicate mystery, sticks to Pearces tried-and-true formula. This time around, Seymour heads to Barcelona to investigate the death of a Gibraltar businessman in a Spanish prison. The catch is that the man died two years previously during what was referred to by Catalan natives as Tragic Week. During this week in 1910, many native Catalans were slaughtered when they refused to be conscripted into military service for Spain. Seymour, with the assistance of his exotic French-Arab paramour, Chantale de Lissac, must connect the dots in a tangled web of Spanish, Arab, Catalan, and English relations to uncover the motive for Sam Lockharts murder. This series continues to be distinguished by an intriguing international flavor and its atmospheric depiction of the convoluted political and social arena that characterized turn-of-the-century Europe and the Middle East.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)