The Seville communion / Arturo Perez-Reverte

Mysterious, deadly conflicts between history and modernity drive Spanish author Pérez-Reverte's latest literate thriller (after The Club Dumas, 1997), an engaging tale of love, greed, faith, betrayal, and murder set in contemporary Seville. When a computer hacker penetrates Vatican security to send an urgent, anonymous plea to the pope, Father Lorenzo Quart of the church's Institute of External Affairs--a sort of Vatican CIA--is dispatched to investigate. The hacker's message concerns a troubled 17th-century church in Seville, Our Lady of the Tears. Apparently, the dilapidated church "kills to defend itself." It stands in the way of a huge real estate deal, and two people have died there--in apparent accidents--as they brought pressure to condemn it. A handsome dandy who wears expensive black suits instead of a cassock and knows how to conduct himself in a fistfight, Quart prides himself on his discipline but soon finds it heavily taxed as he's embroiled with a bellicose, elderly parish priest, a blue-jeaned American nun and a stunning Andalusian duchess intent on saving the church from the businessmen (including her husband) who threaten it. Despite some unconvincing plotting and a few heavy-handed moments, Pérez-Reverte's characters capture the imagination, and his dramatic Seville seduces his protagonist and readers alike.

Translated from the Spanish to English