clairetranier

Coy, a sailor down on his luck, wanders into a nautical auction in Barcelona and witnesses a beautiful blond woman covered in freckles bidding on a rare historical map. He is immediately seized with the lust to possess her and count every last freckle on her body. So begins this historical thriller which delivers lots of history but few thrills. The plot wanders through Spanish coastal towns as the intrepid pair sets out on a treasure hunt to locate priceless emeralds that went to the bottom on a Spanish brigadine carrying Jersuits on a secret voyage three centuries ago. They are chased by an unscrupulous treasure hunter and his sidekick, an evil Argentinian dwarf and ex-torturer. It took me a couple of weeks to wade through this book as I traveled to and from work, which means it never grabbed me enough to keep turning the pages. The problem was that I never believed in Coy's love for Tanger, the enigmatic and fascinating beauty at the center of the novel who simply was not enigmatic or fascinating enough to hold things together. She is too cold. She not only repulses Coy's advances but also those of the reader. I got tired of reading about her assymmetrical blond hair and her freckles. The end, too, was utterly predictable several hundred pages in advance. Also, one is repulsed by Coy's frequent outbursts of inexplicable brutality. So while the Spanish milieu is well-described and the history interesting (I learned a lot about 17th century navigation techniques and the different meridians), I can only give this book one tepid thumbs up.

2022-10-21 05:33