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From Publishers Weekly

Readers of Pérez-Reverte's sixth thriller won't be able to turn the pages fast enough: the author of The Club Dumas, The Seville Communion and other literary adventure novels now tackles the gritty world of drug trafficking in Mexico, southern Spain and Morocco, offering a frightening, fascinating look at the international business of transporting cocaine and hashish as well as a portrait of a smart, fast, daring and lucky woman, Teresa Mendoza. As the novel opens, Teresa's phone rings. She doesn't have to answer it: the phone is a special one given to her by her boyfriend, drug runner and expert Cessna pilot Güero Dávila. He has warned her that if a call ever came, it meant he was dead, and that she had to run for her own life. On the lam, Teresa leaves Mexico for Morocco, where she keeps a low profile transporting drug shipments with her new lover. But after a terrible accident and a brief stint in prison, Teresa's on her own again. She manages to find her way, but Teresa is no mere survivor: gaining knowledge in every endeavor she becomes involved in and using her own head for numbers and brilliant intuition, she eventually winds up heading one of the biggest drug traffic rings in the Mediterranean. Spanning 12 years and introducing a host of intriguing, scary characters, from Teresa's drug-addicted prison comrade to her former assassin turned bodyguard, the novel tells the gripping tale of "a woman thriving in a world of dangerous men."
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From

Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s sixth thriller, modeled after Dantès’ story in Alexandre Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo, received mixed reviews. For some critics, it’s a rip-roaring read that showcases an impressive insight into the international drug trade. In fact, the author draws such vivid, convincing details and “knows so much about drug running it’s gotta be illegal” (_Salon.com_). But a few critics disliked the incongruities of the structural set-up. It makes no sense why the first-person narrator, a reporter chronicling Teresa’s story, can articulate Teresa’s emotions, sexual experiences, and interior dramas, which the novel meticulously mines. Put that quibble aside and the novel is rich, compelling, and, yes, thrilling.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.