Captain Alatriste

3 primary works • 4 total works

Captain Alatriste

by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Published 5 May 2005

Perez-Reverte wrote the Captain Alatriste seies as a homage to the adventure books that had been his own initiation into the world of reading as a boy - books such as Dumas's The Three Musketeers. Captain Alatriste is a swordsman for hire in Spain in the 1620s - a time when Court intrigue was high and the decadent young king had dragged the country into a series of disastrous wars. As a hired 'blade', Alatriste becomes involved in many political plots and must live by his wits. He comes face to face with hired assassins, court players, political moles, smugglers, pirates and of course, the infamous Spanish Inquisition...All the stories are told by Inigo Balboa, Alatriste's young page. The cast of characters also includes Quevedo, an irrepressible subversive poet who likes to start fights in the local tavern, the kind-hearted innkeeper and ex-prostitute who shares Alatriste's bed, the elegant Count of Guadalmedina, the beautiful but deadly Angelica de Alquezar, and a whole host of underworld figures.

Purity of Blood

by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Published 3 January 2006

The second 'Captain Alatriste' novel, from a series which has sold 4 million copies worldwide

A woman has been found in a sedan chair in front of a church, strangled. In her hand is a pouch containing fifty escudos and a handwritten - but unsigned - note bearing the words 'For masses for her soul'. The chief constable Martin Saldana confides in his old friend and comrade in arms, Diego Alatriste. Still in danger from the powerful enemies he made in his first adventure, Captain Alatriste is considering returning to Flanders where the war has just resumed. But first, his old friend Quevedo asks him for a favour.

The daughter of one of his friends must be rescued from a convent, which certain 'priests' seem to be treating as little more than a harem. Then the woman who brought the girl to the convent goes missing and the connection is made to the murder at the church. It seems that Alatriste's sword is required once more.

The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Published 3 September 2009

The fifth novel in the adventures of Captain Alatriste, a seventeenth-century swashbuckler and “a twenty-first-century literary phenomenon”(Entertainment Weekly). 

In the cosmopolitan world of seventeenth-century Madrid, Captain Alatriste and his protégé Íñigo are fish out of water. But the king is determined to keep Alatriste on retainer—regardless of whether his "employment" brings the captain uncomfortably close to old enemies. Alatriste begins an affair with the famous and beautiful actress, María Castro, but soon discovers that the cost of her favors may be more than he bargained for—especially when he and Íñigo become unwilling participants in a court conspiracy that could lead them both to the gallows.

Pirates of the Levant

by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Published 28 February 2007

'This was a time where Spain was revered, feared and hated in the easterly seas; where the devil had no color, no name and no flag, and where the only thing needed to summon hell on earth (or sea for that matter) was a Spaniard and his sword' Alatriste is back - this time on the high seas! Accompanied by his faithful companion Inigo, the captain joins a Spanish galleon and sets sail from Naples towards the east on a journey that will take them to Melilla, Oran, and finally Malta where they must struggle against the Turk. On board they will have many adventures, including an encounter with The Moor Gurriato'. Now seventeen, Inigo is still in love with Angelica but will wisdom come with age and experience?