I discovered Arturo Perez Reverte when someone mentioned the film The Ninth Gate to me. I was intrigued by his brief description of the film - which he had seen in the States - and by the excellent score by Wojciech Kilar, and so I decided to read the book before the film arrived in Britain.

I have never regretted this.

I own four of Perez Reverte's books now, which if not his entire canon is all that has been translated into English. He is a Spanish author, and three of my books are superbly translated by Margaret Jull Costa, the fourth equally well by Sonia Soto. The books are ingeniously plotted, by turns witty, sensuous and disturbing, and besides this extremely well-written.

I have never actually seen the film The Ninth Gate; I heard too many bad things about it. I suspect the book is much better, and will be satisfied.

The Dumas Club

The book now filmed as The Ninth Gate. I was deeply impressed by this, although I'll admit I had been reading a lot of fairly low-standard stuff previously. As well as the main story, The Dumas Club also contains the rough draft of the alternative version of Moby Dick and a discussion of value as opposed to cost - seemingly a favourite subject of the author.

The Jist

Mercenary antiquarian book-finder Lucas Corso embarks on an unexpectedly perilous mission to unravel the seemingly inextricable secrets of two very different texts: An apparently original manuscript of a single chapter of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, and a text called The Nine Doors to the Kingdom of Shadows, the original edition of which is said to contain precise instructions for opening a door to Hell. Aided and hindered by a cast including a friend of questionable value, a very dangerous widow, a mysterious scarred pursuer, a friendly publisher, a wealthy collector of infernal texts and a mysterious, well-read, green-eyed girl, Corso pursues the trail of the texts across Europe, afflicted by the growing certainty that he is becoming ensnared in a story not of his writing.

The Fencing Master

Perez Reverte's first book is probably also his most straightforward, and perhaps his best. The discourses on the art of fencing which litter the text could form a decent primer on the subject, and this depth of research is again is a trademark of the author.

The Jist

In a Madrid dominated by scandal, scheming, revolution and deceit, the Fencing Master, Don Jaime avoids politics in all its forms. He has no time for the national obsession, because he has an obsession of his own: To discover the Holy Grail of the art of fencing; the irresistable thrust. When Dons Adela di Otero enters his world and asks for his teaching, Don Jaime finds himself drawn - completely unwilling and unwitting - into a deadly game of courtly intrigue which threatens to thwart forever his one true goal.

The Flanders Panel

As the plot of this novel winds through the worlds of chess and art restoration, once again Perez Reverte provides his reader with a dazzling array of information on his subjects. I read the final chapters with a chessboard in front of me, in order to follow the moves that were being described.

The Jist

As Julia works on restoring a painting of a chess game between a knight and a nobleman, she uncovers a centuries-old mystery. With the aid of a brilliant chess player and a small group of friends, she sets out to unravel the clues which the painter has left, and discover who ordered the death of the knight in the painting. But then people start to die in her world, and solving the mystery of the chess game ceases to be an academic puzzle, becoming a very real and deadly duel.

The Seville Communion

Perez Reverte takes us on the rollercoaster ride of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical politics. Elevated by his characteristic attention to detail, threads of love, faith, piety, hatred and revenge weave together as the fate of a small parish church becomes the heart of both wider struggles, and more personal.

The Jist

When a hacker breaks into the Vatican computer system to leave a message telling the Pope that a decrepit baroque church in Seville is 'killing to defend itself', the Roman Curia responds by sending Father Lorenzo Quart, an over-worldly but intensely disciplined priest to investigate. Finding the church under threat of demolition, left to its fate by the Archbishop of Seville, Father Quart is faced by the stubborn defiance of the handful of men and women who want to preserve it. As he tries to unravel the varied motives of the church's defenders, seeking the identity of the hacker, Father Quart finds his discipline and detachment challnged, as he is forced to consider whether one of them might also be a killer.