- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Chatto & Windus (20 July 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0701179759
- ISBN-13: 978-0701179755
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.2 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 957,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Book of the Week, Guardian Review by Todd McEwen
‘fantastically funny…Marias is a deeply necessary writer, a crusader, funny, pungent, full of wrath and love.’
Ali Smith in Independent on Sunday.
‘gripping and strange’
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Spaniard Jaime/Jacobo/Jack/Jacques Deza (" interpreter of people, translator of lives") works for Bertram Putra's secretive and unnamed agency in London in a building with no name. He is a person with a mind in continuous overdrive. Part 1 of the trilogy ended with a cliff hanger, with Deza being followed at night walking home. Part 2 provides a partial answer: the follower's identity is disclosed, also the request made to Deza, and Deza's compliance. But not why he does so.
This book is a superb study about the concept of fear and how to instil it, with real time and historical examples, such as horrific events during the Spanish civil war and the terror inflicted by the criminal, sword-wielding Kray twins in London in the 1960s. It gathers weight and speed in the second half, when Deza accompanies his boss to a nightclub for an important meeting during which Deza has to keep the wife of Tupra's contact happy, pleased with herself. What happens next is truly superior descriptive writing about fear and its application and provides the reader with two cliff hangers: Tupra decides Deza is still too naive for his own good, has his priorities wrong and drives him to his home. Before that, Tupra asked/ordered Deza to accompany him on a foreign mission. In Part Three, Deza is going to be shown the facts of life, one way or the other.
Part 1 and 2 provide a backdrop for a dramatic and resounding finale in Part 3. Will Deza be welcomed back by his wife in Madrid? Will the mystery about the bloodstain on spy master Wheeler's staircase be solved conclusively? Etc., etc.
On the rebound from Part 1, I reread a few early novels by John Le Carre, the best writer on espionage. They hark back to the early 1960s. They proved to be timeless and fantastic entertainment. Marias' spy trilogy has been subordinated to lots of other ideas and memories and concerns and ambitions. He is longwinded and not as accessible as Le Carre, many of whose books require, after all, careful reading . There are occasional nasty asides in Part 2: I share his distaste of Berlusconi, but why should women wearing berets deserve to be shot? Spanish readers may see more ultra-swift, one sentence- long character murders in this volume.
The plots thickens, the tension mounts. Volume 3, after all, equals the two introductory books in size and weight.
This book is a superb study about the concept of fear and how to instil it, with real time and historical examples, such as horrific events during the Spanish civil war and the terror inflicted by the criminal, sword-wielding Kray twins in London in the 1960s. It gathers weight and speed in the second half, when Deza accompanies his boss to a nightclub for an important meeting during which Deza has to keep the wife of Tupra's contact happy, pleased with herself. What happens next is truly superior descriptive writing about fear and its application and provides the reader with two cliff hangers: Tupra decides Deza is still too naive for his own good, has his priorities wrong and drives him to his home. Before that, Tupra asked/ordered Deza to accompany him on a foreign mission. In Part Three, Deza is going to be shown the facts of life, one way or the other.
Part 1 and 2 provide a backdrop for a dramatic and resounding finale in Part 3. Will Deza be welcomed back by his wife in Madrid? Will the mystery about the bloodstain on spy master Wheeler's staircase be solved conclusively? Etc., etc.
On the rebound from Part 1, I reread a few early novels by John Le Carre, the best writer on espionage. They hark back to the early 1960s. They proved to be timeless and fantastic entertainment. Marias' spy trilogy has been subordinated to lots of other ideas and memories and concerns and ambitions. He is longwinded and not as accessible as Le Carre, many of whose books require, after all, careful reading . There are occasional nasty asides in Part 2: I share his distaste of Berlusconi, but why should women wearing berets deserve to be shot? Spanish readers may see more ultra-swift, one sentence- long character murders in this volume.
The plots thickens, the tension mounts. Volume 3, after all, equals the two introductory books in size and weight.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read and it has stayed with me a long long time after reading. Slightly less dense than the first in the trilogy I actually found it a real page turner unlike the previous reviewer! Fever & Spear was so beautifully written with so much to say in each paragraph that I kept wanting to go back and re-read bits. I would definitely recommend reading that one first because what happens in this book is very much the effect of the causes made in the first. Highly recommended!
11 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The October 2006 book for my reading club: nearly 300 pages of a writer who is considered as a serious candidate to be a future Nobel Prize winner. But I was not impressed, it even irritated me (something that seldomly happens with books): pompous style, unclear contents, long sentences that just list events/things/persons. I thought that the problem might be in the translation, but when I tried the Spanish version it was just as awful. And since life is too short for unreadable books I stopped after 2 attempts and 67 pages (which meant that I gave it a serious try).
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