ridgewaygirl 's review for:

The Day of Atonement by David Liss

4.0

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This book is set in Lisbon in the mid-eighteenth century. The inquisition, having wound down in Spain, is still going strong in Portugal. New Christians, those Jews whose grandparents converted long ago, are still carefully watched and are restricted as to what professions they can enter and who they can marry. The British are there in order to make money, and New Christians often lend them money for their financial transactions. Sebastian was thirteen when his parents were taken in for questioning and he was smuggled out of the country by a British businessman. Now, a decade later, he returns to Lisbon, to find the priest who arrested his parents and to kill him. But it all ends up becoming more complicated, as he discovers more about what happened to his parents and the friends they had.

This is an action-filled thriller with a protagonist who shares his skill set with Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne. He's young and often misled, but he can always fight his own way out of a bad situation, or successfully rescue whomever needs rescuing. Despite this, there was clearly a great deal of research that went into this book, and it was a fun way to learn about what life was like in Lisbon at that time.