The Flanders Panel

Rating:
Summary: A French best seller? But so are Jerry Lewis & Mickey Rouke
Review: The reviewers that compared this to Name Of The Rose either didn't read Eco's book or were educated at an exceptional trade school. My kid's Barbie has more depth than any of these stereotypical characters. The mystery is slightly more challanging than a word search puzzle, and the denouemont is silly enough to make you cry that trees were cut down to make this book. The chess problem was the only good thing about this waste of time except I don't read fiction to learn chess.

Rating:
Summary: Intriging chess characterization, while deficient history
Review: As an avid chess player, I was impressed with the use of the chess game depicted in the artwork, as a platform for the novel's plot. The artist successfully and engagingly interwove the characters' stories with the progression of the game. The disappointing aspects of the novel were the lack of substantive historical significance and its tenuous association with the present mystery. The novel was touted as a mystery orignating in the fifteenth century. However, in the end, history was no more than a specious pretext.

Rating:
Summary: MUNOZ NO SHERLOCK HOLMES (Book good, chess only fair)
Review: I found The Flanders Panel playable and entertaining, an extremely pleasurable read. Naturally, as a chess fanatic, it was the chess problem that is the key to the murder mystery that most caught my attention, as well as the book review blurb stating that as chess fiction, The Flanders Panel might rank even higher than Stefan Zweig's The Royal Game (a claim that I agree with as far as length and therefore entertainment duration go, but disagree with as far as writing quality, but never mind). I quite enjoyed this novel's characterizations, and not simply of the chessplayer Munoz (whom I found more convincing and less extreme as the chessplayer-stereotype than Zweig's Czentovic or Vladimir Nabokov's Luzhin). The author, Perez-Reverte, is clearly well-read, in books of logic and philosophy as well as chess, and features quotations from many of them at the beginnings of chapters, including from both of Raymond Smullyan's retrograde analysis chess books. All the standard chess philosophy and psychology was discussed (though the notion that the Bishop's diagonal move indicates femininity or homosexuality was a new one on me). All in all, this was a very satisfying book. Except for the chess problem itself! It turns out that the problem is taken from Smullyan's The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, with some changes. The chief difference in the diagram positions is that Perez-Reverte has replaced Smullyan's Black King on the key square with a Black Queen. Perhaps these changes, in part, at least, work for plot reasons, but it is these very changes that have turned a chess problem that works into a chess problem that doesn't. First, while the Smullyan problem specifically tells us as givens which side of the chessboard is White's side, that it is White's move, and that no pawn has promoted to another piece in the game, Perez-Reverte has his chessplayer character Munoz simply peremptorily tell us the first two are somehow obvious frmo the position and just plain overlook the third one without telling us, simply assuming it in his reasoning and so appearing to have overlooked the possibility of past pawn promotions, which wrecks the validity of his chess deductions (for just one example, Black's last move could instead have been a pawn promoting into the Black Rook or Knight in the diagram) and is inconsistent with the Holmesian maxim that Munoz repeatedly cites about proving the improbable by eliminating the impossible. (It would have been easy enough for Perez-Reverte to make his version of the problem work too. For example, if he wanted to establish the absence of pawn promotions without distracting the readers of the novel by discussing it, he could have simply ensured that all 16 pawns were still on the board.) Second, because the position has a Queen instead of a King in the key square, Munoz commits a completely unforgivable howler in his chess reasoning: his assumption that, if Black just moved his Queen, White must have just moved to attack the Queen (and not previously been attacking it). Says who? Is there some rule of chess stating that you're not allowed to move your Queen unless the opponent attacks it that I somehow had previously been unaware of? Now, this assumption worked for Smullyan's King, since there is a rule that you have to move your King immediately as soon as your opponent attacks or checks it. But it does not work for the Queen. As far as my (admittedly limited) analysis can tell, there is no way to know, even assuming that Black has just moved his Queen, what move White made before that. He could have done almost anything. Assuming that White hadn't been attacking the Black Queen before and so must have just moved to attack it makes the rest of the author's analysis possible, but it shows Munoz up to be a complete incompetent and fraud. For the next several pages after I read this explanation, I was waiting for Munoz to go back and say "Of course, White could have done something else," and then cleverly disprove that possibility, but he didn't. When this glaringly blatant leap in illogic wasn't taken care of, the next several chapters I was expecting Munoz to be the murderer who deliberately misled the other characters about the correct chess analysis in order to cover his tracks. Without revealing whether or not Munoz was in fact the murderer, I can say that I have concluded that Munoz is a fool and that either the author, Perez-Reverte, is too, or else he knew what he was doing but figured nobody would notice as long as it was an entertaining book, which is a fine approach to writing fiction, but it doesn't work for me, either in law fiction, science fiction, or chess fiction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. It was still quite an interesting piece of chess retrograde analysis, and of course it was delightful to see a novel of popular literature seriously discussing such a subject. Though the erroneous reasoning was a little too bad and did detract a little from my assessment of the book's quality, it didn't ruin the book for me. I still believe that The Flanders Panel is well worth reading, especially for any chess enthusiast. The very fact that the chess problem was disappointing to me attests to the interest and enjoyment I got out of this otherwise fine book. I hope that in the next book Perez-Reverte gets it right!

Rating:
Summary: A intelligent, gripping mystery.
Review: The characters are overdrawn. The plot contains several contrived twists. But the set-up is fascinating, and the resolution takes many unexpected turns throughout the book. Chess enthusiasts will enjoy some of the intracicies of the game interspersed through the book, and the chess-player character is the most sincere. If you can get past the other cartoon characters in the book,this mystery is for you

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Summary: Check! - In an Allegorical Kinda Way
Review: Just how many different chess games were going on here, anyway? And how many of them used a conventional chessboard and pieces? I found the chess game in the picture Julia was restoring the most compelling. I liked that the author tried to stretch the boundaries of dimension. But the ending! Was it believable? Did I buy that it would be THAT person for THOSE reasons? And the start of that beautiful friendship as the two walked away into the twilight? Truly stretching it

Rating:
Summary: Clever chess maybe; clever characterizations NOT!
Review: Perez-Reverte's meticulous depiction of art, history, literature, music and chess did not extend to the characters that populate this novel, most of whom belong in trashy novels that don't pretend to be intellectual. I found the gay character to be especially outdated - so witty, so sarcastic, so sensitive, so well dressed, so stereotypical. The other characters were cliches as well - the aging party girl, her dim but handsome boyfriend, the elderly rich man, his greedy daughter, the enigmatic geek, the ineffectual police detective. I was insulted by the "surprise" ending - the multi-layered mystery resolved itself with a very disappointing and unbelievable whimper. Don't be fooled by comparisons to the The Name of the Rose or anything by Umberto Eco - all resemblences are superficial. Erudition is not the same as quality

Rating:
Summary: A game of chess becomes terrifyingly real!
Review: Take: one art restorer; a painting depicting a game of chess; four mysterious words: "Who killed the knight?"; one real-life chess expert; an enigmatic father figure; and an ounce of curiosity; and you have the magnificent recipe for an engrossing novel that is part mystery, part thriller, yet so much more. This is a beautifully written book that you will want to own and reread.

Rating:
Summary: Much more than a mistery novel
Review: I would highly recommned the book to all the people who love good mistery novel, which beside a very good plot, offers much more. The story of an old flemish painting representing two friends playing chess and a woman, sitting in the back, reading a book becomes intelinked to the life of a Madrid's art expert Julia and her circle of friends. Through discovery of the history and story of the painting her life and lives of her friends come into danger through "a plot" what it seems to be diabolic and genious at the same time. It offers a challenge to every reader, because it really is much more than a mistery novel. Specially recommended to all the chess players outthere.

Rating:
Summary: Great mystery, until the ending
Review: This is the second book that I have read from ARTURO PEREZ-REVERTE, and just like the first I was turning pages as quickly as I could read them (The Club Dumas). It's a great story which has the heroine figuring out a mystery from the past. I thought the character development was excellent and it really showed that there are good people and there are bad (even the people you don't suspect, have their own human flaws)in this world (even if they are fictional). I was particularly empressed with the twists and turns all the way up to the ending; which then kind of fizzeled my interest(reason for 4 stars - last chapter). Perhaps I didn't get it but I was completely let down when the final checkmate was discovered and the perptrator was revealed. Overall this book was worth the read and peaked my interest in art as well as in chess. A novice who is interested in the craft of chess should give this book a read.


Rating:
Summary: Very readable
Review: This is the first book I've read by Perez-Reverte. I found it very readable and enjoyed it. It started of a little slow but picked up nicely.

The character development of the three main characters was handled very well. The main character, Julia, an art restorer in Spain, is restoring a fictional painting depicting a chess game played in the 1500's. While doing so, she discovers a hidden message - Quis Necavit Equitem - Who killed the Knight? Julia is determined to solve a 500 year old mystery of who killed one of the players depicted in the painting.

Her two allies in the search, the wise Cesar and the quirky Munoz , are polar opposites that Perez-Reverte weaves together to form a very good murder mystery. I especially like the character Munoz.