I liked this 2nd book in this series slightly better than book one. It could stand alone as a story, but the main character through all 3 books in Alexandra ("Alex") LaDuca, so if you read them in order, you will get to know her better with each story.

In this book Alex finds herself being sent to Madrid to find the trail of a stolen sculpture, the 'Pieta of Malta'. She will find herself working with a mysterious Chinese man and tries to stay alive amid much intrigue, danger and even betrayal. As the back cover states, this book "takes the reader on a nonstop spellbinding chase through a modern world of spies, terrorists, art thieves, and cold-blooded killers." ( )

couldn't get into it ( )

3 1/2 stars. Midnight in Madrid was pretty good. It's Christian fiction, but the christian undertones are not excessive. A good, action-packed thriller, although the writing was a bit plodding at times. It's the second in the series, but it stands on its own pretty well (i read it out of order). I will definitely go back and read the first one. ( )

decent mystery. Didn't read the first book. May consider doing that. ( )

Alexandra DaLuca, a US Treasury agent, is holidaying in Barcelona, recovering from personal tragedy that occurred six months before and from nearly being gunned down in the Paris Metor four months earlier. Her boss in Washington asks her to accept an assignment in Madrid, to join an international team that will try to track down a religious relic known as the Pieta of Malta, stolen from a Madrid museum just two weeks before. There are fears that the proceeds from sale of the treasure will be used to finance further terrorist activity in Spain. Alex is fluent in Spanish, has some background in art history, is very IT savvy, and already on the spot. Nor is she your ordinary Treasury officer. She is a killer.

By the time we meet Alex, the reader is already aware of discontent in the radical Islamic movement in Spain, of a man who is importing explosives into Spain and of the death of a Chinese mystic in Switzerland. We know these elements will all, somehow, be connected.

MIDNIGHT IN MADRID is a thriller, with a tight time frame, with short punchy chapters, threads that are being advanced simultaneously, and a real feeling of a race against time, as terrorists tunnel under Madrid.

While MIDNIGHT IN MADRID is not a particularly long novel, one of my problems with it is that the author wanted to tell me so much, and left me little to research for myself. The information was comprehensive and ranged from explanations about Christian iconography, philosophy of religion, a history of modern art theft, lessons in the history of the world, of terrorism, of Al-Qaeda. At times there was travelogue, and the result was that I felt that the author wanted to talk about moral issues, to justify the USA's anti-terrorism methods, and that his characters were his mouthpiece. There was a lot that could have been trimmed. It felt that he needed me to understand that the novel has a solid factual basis, but it also gives him the opportunity to postulate some pretty unconvincing theories.

The second problem I had was being told soon after Alex appeared in the novel that she is a Christian. That caused me discomfort right from the start, and I then had further problems when I found out that she had (reluctantly) killed someone in Kiev. she prayed that God would someday have mercy on her.

I realise though there are many who will be able to enjoy MIDNIGHT IN MADRID without these qualms. ( )