Captain Alatriste

Once again, thanks, NPR Book Notes, for introducing me to a new dashing hero in Captain Alatriste (#55) by Arturo Perez-Reverte.  Think of a Spanish version of The Three Musketeers (especially the Oliver Reed, Michael York, Fay Dunaway, Geraldine Chaplin movies) set in Madrid in the early 1600s, and you'll get an idea of what this book is like.

Captain Alatriste is home from the wars in the Netherlands and is relying on his wits and his sword to earn himself a living.  One of his friends, the constable of Madrid, approaches Alatriste with what he claims is an easy job.  Alatriste agrees and is escorted to a meeting with two masked, but apparently high ranking men plus another soldier of fortune like himself.  They are told that the job is to rough up two Englishmen and make sure that they obtain the documents the Englishmen are carrying.  However, their original orders are changed by a powerful member of the Inquisition.  He wants the heretics dead, or else.  Captain Alatriste begins to smell a rat, but it is too late to back out, and the other man seems not to have a problem with their new assignment.  Needless to say, things do not go as planned at the ambush, and Alatriste soon finds himself on the receiving end of their employers' wrath.  What is really going on here?  And will he survive?

Captain Alatriste is not a very big book, but it is an exciting read.  Costume dramas aren't in vogue right now, or this would make a really good movie.  The narrator of the book is Diego Alatriste's young page, Inigo Balboa, who is telling the tale many years and adventures later.  Alatriste himself is surrounded by his crowd of friends of poets, priests and painters.  Although he is a modest man himself, he has managed in his career to date to meet many prominent and powerful people who owe him gratitude and more.  In this book, he meets several more.  And Inigo himself meets his nemesis for the first time, the mysterious and beautiful golden-haired girl.

I'm not familiar with Spanish poets of the early 17th century, but the book is sprinkled with some of their work in a way that keeps the plot moving along nicely, plus a brief appendix containing more of this poetry.  No wonder this series of books translated from the Spanish has been so popular abroad.  Perez-Reverte has one more American fan.