[Gocamino] Pillars Death Devil

[Elcaminomejala at aol.com]

"Pillars" is excellent, I loved it. The kind of book where you never  want to 
reach the end, and when you do you keep wanting more! I once read  an 
interview with Follett where he said that it was his favorite  book.  
 
Another one I liked is Frank Schatzing's  "Tod und Teufel,"  translated from 
the original German into Spanish as: "Las sombras de la  catedral." 
 
And translated into English as: 
 
Death and the  Devil

In the year 1260, under the supervision of the architect Gerhard  Morart, the 
most ambitious ecclesiastical building in the history of  Christendom is 
rising above the merchant city of Cologne: the great  cathedral. Far below the 
soaring spires and arches, a bitter struggle is  underway between Cologne's 
wealthy families who control the movement of  goods into and out of the city, and 
the Lord Archbishop of Cologne —  Conrad von Hochstaden. The enormous wealth of 
this prosperous commercial  center is in play — a struggle that quickly 
becomes deadly. 
Morart, pushed to his death from the cathedral's scaffolding, is only  the 
first of many victims. But there's a witness to Morart's murder: Jacob  the Fox, 
a red-haired petty thief. The street-smart thief is naive in the  ways of the 
political world and he soon finds himself engaged in a  desperate battle with 
some very powerful forces. 
Most dangerous of all is the killer himself — a huge man named Urquhart  — 
clad in black, with remarkable speed, strength, and intelligence. A  Scottish 
lord and former Crusader, Urquhart has dark secrets that have  stripped away 
his humanity and turned him into a cruel, efficient hired  assassin of the 
wealthy merchant families. 
Jacob — uneducated and superstitious — fears the killer is the Angel of  
Death himself. But the wily Fox makes an alliance with some of the  strangest of 
bedfellows, from the beautiful clothes dyer Richmodis and her  drunken rascal 
of a father Goddert, to her learned uncle Dr. Jaspar  Rodenkirchen, a 
physician and the dean of St. Mary Magdalene's, who loves  a good debate almost as 
much as he loves a bottle of wine. 
Can this very odd foursome learn the truth of the evil conspiracy  before 
their quest to save Jacob leads to their deaths at the end of a  crossbow arrow?
About the Author:
Frank Schatzing, born in 1957, published the historical novel Tod  und Teufel 
(Death and the Devil) in 1995, with 250,000 copies  in print. After two 
further novels and a collection of stories, his  political thriller Lautlos 
appeared in 2000, then in 2004, the  international bestseller Der Schwarm (published 
in the United  States and Britain as The Swarm). In 2002, he received the  
KölnLiteratur prize, in 2004 the Corine Prize, and in 2005 the German  Science 
Fiction Prize. Schatzing lives and works in Cologne,  Germany.






In a message dated 5/21/2007 10:09:56 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
highbell at sbcglobal.net writes:

My  brother has mentioned it as a good read too.  I must put it on my  list 
for the post-camino months when I am yearning to return to  Europe.
Bridget

Paul Skip Newfield III  <skip at thebrasscannon.com> wrote:


On the  construction of a cathedral...

I recommend ~Pillars of the  Earth~, a novel by Ken Follett.
It was recommended to me by several  fellow pilgrims while I was walking
the Camino. Besides being an  engrossing story over several generations,
the technical details of  the construction itself makes the book worth
reading.

Paul  Newfield











************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.