Anyone read any Arturo Perez-Reverte? Has he lost it?

[Pert_UK]

He wrote The Dumas Club which was used as a basis for Johnny Depp in The Ninth Gate. Not a bad film at all, but the book is HUGELY better.

Perez-Reverte has written some stunning stuff - some of my favourite ever books - but it seems he's lost it recently.

The Dumas Club and The Flanders (okely dokely!) Panel are works of genius IMHO. Unbelievably well-researched but maintaining a pace and level of interest that leaves you breathless. For these books, I see the author as a kind of Umberto Eco Lite - all of the plot and character development and brilliant research and historical accuracy, but with less heavy prose to wade through.

However, I've recently begun to think that he's lost it.

Firstly, the books have become very formulaic - if you've read one of them you just KNOW to expect a twist at the end and you can see what it's going to be from a mile away.

Secondly, he seems to have got confused about historical accuracy. His books (especially The Nautical Chart) are no longer stories that happen to be packed with historically accurate detail as part of the narrative. Instead they contain ludicrously long lists of unnecessary, superfluous historical information that add nothing to the plot and just slow you down.

The Seville Communion lacked the pace and characters of The Dumas Club and The Flanders Panel, but was still a thoroughly decent read. The Fencing Master (which inspired me to take fencing lessons) began to show the signs of too much detail - did we REALLY need every single technical fencing term (which few understand) and such a ridiculously involved and detailed historical plot? But even then, the book was still very entertaining and had superb characterisation.

The Nautical Chart seems to be made up of re-hashed characters from previous books and is about twice as long as previous novels, purely because Perez-Reverte insists on getting bogged in irrelevant, esoteric historical and nautical information. It's almost as if he's determined to shout "Look how much research I did here, I can name 3 different types of 17th Century rigging and 5 different variations on the sextant!". The twist is about as subtle as a horse at a dinner party and can be seen from miles away, especially if you've read anything else by the same author.

If you've not ready any of his work, I HIGHLY recommend Dumas and Flanders and then if you enjoy them try Fencing and Seville. If you have ready any of them, what do you think about my comments?

On edit: more info and vote for your favourite work here:

http://www.bastulli.com/Perez-Reverte/Perez-Reverte.htm

P.

[Pert_UK]

1. I'm going to kick it once, given the Johnny Depp link......

and that this guy wrote the book on which the Ninth Gate was based.

Somebody out there must have read this guy?

P.