Purity of Blood - Softcover

Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novels have captivated readers around the world and earned him a reputation as “the master of the intellectual thriller” (Chicago Tribune). Originally a war correspondent, he now writes fiction full-time. His novels include the Captain Alatriste series, The Flanders Panel, The Club Dumas, The Fencing Master, The Seville Communion, The Nautical Chart, The Queen of the South, and What We Become. His books have been published in fifty countries.He is a member of the Spanish Royal Academy. He lives near Madrid, Spain.

Spanish novelist Perez-Reverte is known the world over for his historical thrillers, and now his earlier five-novel historical-fiction series, the Adventures of Captain Alatriste, all of which were huge best sellers in his native Spain, is being published in the U.S. for the first time, one volume at a time. Captain Alatriste (2005) was the first to appear, and now the second installment makes its American debut. The novels are set in seventeenth-century Spain, centered in the Spanish capital--during the time when the glitter of the Spanish empire was already showing itself to be thin and worn ("the dark, violent, and contradictory Spain of our Catholic king Philip IV"). Captain Diego Alatriste, a veteran of Spain's foreign wars, is currently a sword for hire. On this occasion, in this completely absorbing novel that, like the first one in the series, absolutely defines swashbuckling, he is contracted to help a man from a Jewish-turned-Catholic family rescue his daughter from behind the thick walls of a Madrid convent, which the chaplain "has turned . . . into his private seraglio." This novel is written in the mold of Dumas' musketeer novels and excitingly upholds the tradition. Brad Hooper
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