The Seville Communion (1995)

Seville is known for its barbers, its Gypsy temptresses, its Latin lovers; for the tomb (if not the actual body) of Christopher Columbus, bullfights, orange blossoms, Holy Week processions and an extraordinary mix of Arab, Baroque and Renaissance architecture. Julius Caesar conquered it; the Roman Emperors Hadrian and Trajan were born nearby; the Vandals, Visigoths, Moors and crusaders grudgingly passed it on to one another. It was the site of the Spanish Inquisition's first auto-da-fe, but, most important, the home port of Spain's bounteous New World empire. ''Dramatic extravagance,'' V. S. Pritchett once observed, ''is in the Sevillian nature.''

And dramatic extravagance is what the former journalist Arturo Perez-Reverte provides in ''The Seville Communion,'' his third thriller (following ''The Flanders Panel'' and ''The Club Dumas'') to be published in English and the second to be translated by Sonia Soto. Perez-Reverte writes with wit, narrative economy, a sharp eye for the telling detail and a feel for history. ''The Seville Communion'' is good fun, as entertaining as it often is silly. . . .

Almost all of Perez-Reverte's characters are plausible, but usually as types. His vivid descriptions of the city, like his stories of Seville's outsize romantic and heroic past, are more resonant. Good at making the reader want answers, he is less good at giving satisfying ones. Finally, motive and explanation are too stagy and, more disappointing, the murderer is too peripheral to the psychological heart of the story. There's also a lot of facile talk about splendid buildings and elaborate ritual as a ''means of entrancing the masses'' because ''naked faith can't be sustained.'' Much of this seems filched from the Cliffs Notes to Dostoyevsky's ''Grand Inquisitor.'' Still, you'd have to be a remarkably faithless reader not to want to visit Seville after finishing this flavorful confection.