From #1 bestselling author and Dagger Award winner, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, comes an epic historical tale following the dangerous and passionate love affair between a beautiful high society woman and an elegant thief–a story of romance, adventure, and espionage, this novel solidifies Pérez-Reverte as an international literary giant.
En route from Lisbon to Buenos Aires in 1928, Max and Mecha meet aboard a luxurious transatlantic cruise ship. There Max teaches the stunning stranger and her erudite husband to dance the tango. A steamy affair ignites at sea and continues as the seedy decadence of Buenos Aires envelops the secret lovers.
Nice, 1937. Still drawn to one another a decade later, Max and Mecha rekindle their dalliance. In the wake of a perilous mission gone awry, Mecha looks after her charming paramour until a deadly encounter with a Spanish spy forces him to flee.
Sorrento, 1966. Max once again runs into trouble—and Mecha. She offers him temporary shelter from the KGB agents on his trail, but their undeniable attraction offers only a small glimmer of hope that their paths will ever cross again.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte is at his finest here, offering readers a bittersweet, richly rendered portrait of a powerful, forbidden love story that burns brightly over forty years, from the fervor of youth to the dawn of old age.
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“A hypnotic rhapsody of a novel that drinks freely from many genres: historical epic, Hitchcockian thriller, and, above all, grand love story, both heartbreaking and deliciously sexy. Pérez-Reverte masterfully, excruciatingly, jumps back and forth between the three encounters, playing the reader’s emotions masterfully and creating as much tension through the love story as through the derring-do and the betrayals that stain both. An intoxicating entertainment, pulsing with life but, at the same time, with a kind of damp, hidden lament for all that was and is no more.”
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Booklist (starred review)