Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Historical adventure fiction

THE DEVILS OF CARDONA

Matthew Carr

Gripping historical thriller set in sixteenth century Spain, with a lovable but fallible central character, a crackling plot interlaced with every conceivable human vice, all with the sinister and sadistic officers of the Spanish Inquisition ominously waiting in the wings.

March 1584. The priest of Belamar de la Sierra, a small Pyrenean Spanish town in Aragon near the French border, is brutally murdered in his own church. Most of Belamar’s inhabitants are Moriscos, former Muslims converted to Catholicism, also known as New Christians. Anxious to avert a violent ethnic backlash on the eve of the first royal visit to Aragon in more than twenty years, King Philip II’s advisor appoints Bernardo de Mendoza, criminal magistrate at the Royal Court to investigate the murder. A bibliophile, humanist, war veteran, and musician, Mendoza’s reputation for incorruptibility makes him a natural choice. On his arrival at Belamar, Mendoza finds almost universal hatred and resentment towards the priest among the Moriscos, which suggests that he was killed out of revenge for the many humiliations he had heaped upon them. He also learns that his quest coincides with the ongoing attempts by the ruthless and ambitious local Inquisition commissioner Don Felipe Silesio de Mercader to carry out a purge of Belamar’s Moriscos, whom he regards as heretics engaged in subversive plots. As more murders occur, Mendoza’s criminal investigation is increasingly overshadowed by the prospect of an all-out ethnic and religious civil war in the Pyrenees. At length he discovers that nothing is as it seems, that he himself is being manipulated, and that the priest’s murder was just the start of a complex and widespread conspiracy that reaches into the heart of the Castilian court, and he begins to suspect some of the same high state officials who sent him to investigate. Matthew Carr is a writer, journalist, blogger, and lifelong Hispanophile. THE DEVILS OF CARDONA is his first novel; his non-fiction books include: The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism; Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent; and Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain.

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Book Published 2016-06-01 by Riverhead

Comments

A religious, political, sexual jigsaw…an entertaining historical mystery.

A remarkably well-written and entertaining novel. Mathew Carr fills his work with compelling characters and handles his material – more than a little relevant for our times – with dazzling grace.

Carr certainly delivers a powerful punch in his debut.The Devils of Cardonais also the perfect set-up for a sequel, for Mendoza and his men have plenty of life left in them still.

The Devils of Cardona is one of those rare historical mysteries that is as thrilling as it is thoughtful. Aside from violence and philosophy, it encompasses political machinations and sexual intrigue and seems ripe for translation to the screen. In this day and age, its message of religious and social tolerance would be well served by being further disseminated, even as it is already beautifully delivered in this intelligent, entertaining book.

History and atmosphere, sex and superior storytelling, The Devils of Cardona has it all. A page-turning thriller, full of engaging male and female characters, with a great sense of time and place. A treat.

A gritty, meticulously detailed story of suspense in sixteenth-century Spain.

Fans of rich historical intrigue like Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall or the engrossing 16th-century pageantry of Álvaro Enrigue's Sudden Death should consider Matthew Carr’s historical fiction debut…fans of the genre will find much to enjoy.

"[A] violent action-packed novel...Mr. Carr’s depiction of the society he is dealing with is utterly convincing....The novel can, justifiably, be read as an adventure story or compelling historical crime fiction, and certainly it is a satisfying example of either genre. Mr. Carr has written a gripping and enjoyable novel, and there is surely scope for his judge Mendoza to deal with other crimes and puzzles. But, inevitably, this book has a wider application and interest, given the state of the world today and the tensions between the Muslim and Christian, or Western, worlds." Read more...

Satisfying…a masterly recreation of a fascinating era.

“What begins as a mystery becomes an adventure, a thrilling quest for justice on more levels than Mendoza (or the reader) expects. Along the way, Carr brings the late 16th century to life with all its contradictions and savagery…a novel that is as exciting as it is enlightening from its first pages to its satisfying end.”

In this new novel, The Devils of Cardona, the author uses his knowledge of this history to weave a meticulously detailed story of intrigue, danger, sex and suspense in sixteenth-century Spain. This religiously charged dramatic time and place filled with complex characters parallel our own time as Christianity and Islam are ideologically at war again.