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Rose
by: Martin Cruz Smith

Off The Bookshelf's Price: $7.99

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Used Price: $0.01
Collectible Price: $10.00
Third Party New Price: $3.95

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345422521
ISBN: 034542252X
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: February 01, 2000
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: February 01, 2000
Studio: Ballantine Books
Sales Rank: 89389

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
The year is 1872. The place is Wigan, England, a coal town where rich mine owners live lavishly alongside miners no better than slaves. Into this dark, complicated world comes Jonathan Blair, who has accepted a commission to find a missing man.

When he begins his search every road leads back to one woman, a haughty, vixenish pit girl named Rose. With her fiery hair and skirts pinned up over trousers, she cares nothing for a society that calls her unnatural, scandalous, erotic.

As Rose and Blair circle one another, first warily, then with the heat of mutual desire, Blair loses his balance. And the lull induced by Rose's sensual touch leaves him unprepared for the bizarre, soul-scorching truth. . . .

Amazon.com Review:
For Jonathon Blair, a mining engineer and explorer, the color and rigors of the Dark Continent are far more suitable than the foggy drizzle of his home in Wigan, Lancashire. When he returns from Africa's Gold Coast in 1872, he finds England utterly depressing and turns to drink to ease his melancholy. His patron, a Bishop and mine owner, agrees to send him back if he can clear up the mysterious disappearance of a local curate engaged to marry his daughter. As he sleuths around the cultured homes of Wigan, through ill-cobbled alleys and into the depths of the mines, he meets the alluring Rose Malyneaux. Used to relying on himself, Blair finds that Rose's instincts provide more answers than he could have hoped for.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- The mystery is quite good but the story starts out so slow and dreary that until things picked up I was just yawning
"Rose" is a novel that without question, I would never have seen or heard of without Amazon's listamania system. But as it happened, someone liked this book and listed it and made it sound interesting enough for me to read it.

Blaire is a mining engineer desperate-for person reasons-to get back to the gold coast of Africa, which, although he was born English and raised American is as much his home as anywhere. But with no money and no good reputation he is at the mercy of the Bishop Hannay who will fiancé Blaire's return if-and only if-he will return to the town of Wigan (where he and the Bishop share a birthplace if nothing of the same history) and find Hannay's daughter's missing fiancé, who was the towns curate, John Maypole.

Blaire isn't a happy but he takes ... Read More

Rating:

- Masterful despite a plot quirk
Rose is one of the most evocative, beautifully written historical novels I've ever read. Smith picks you up and puts you down in a Victorian-era mining village where you can feel the coal dust in the air, as well as an undercurrent of danger. His descriptions are palpable and very sensuous, and you really crawl into the skin of his protagonist.

I give this five stars despite a major "Say what???" moment during the resolution, alluded to by some other reviewers. Yes, the plot turns in a completely unbelievable direction. It's a testament to Mr. Smith's writing that I still think of this novel as absolutely exquisite. It's the kind of book you find yourself picking up and opening at random every once in a while, just for the pleasure of returning to the world he created.

Read More

Rating:

- A rainy day of a book
What a tedious slog through rainy, dim Wigan. Many years ago I had the pleasure of listening to Martin Cruz Smith discuss how Gorky Park, his most recent book, was fertilized by his reading about how faces could be reconstructed from bones and muscles. He liked the idea and wanted to write a book around that thought. He did, and a compelling book and fascinating book was eventually born. I've read several others of his, and enjoyed them all. This one has been on my shelf for a number of years before I dusted it off and plowed in. Oh, how much better if it had remained upright.

I cannot for the life of me understand all the 4 and 5 star reviews. As a sociological study of a coal mining town, it is interesting. I've read many books about this time, and this certainly added to my knowledge. ... Read More

Rating:

- Juicy, enthralling period piece
Disclaimer: it's been many years since I read this book. But I still recall it as a vividly painted, unpredictable love story/mystery that was very satisfying. I've also read Polar Star and Gorky Park: both wonderful, detailed, rich, as well. But I liked this one more. I concur with the reviews that call some of the plot twists a tad too fantastic, but I was willing to go along for the ride. For one thing, the love story is juicy, naughty, teasing -- delicious. I suppose this is a chick flick of a novel, and yet many of the details were shockingly grotesque and violent. Anyway, give it a try. If it's too slow for you, try an Arkady Renko book instead. Or, just let it sink into you and enjoy it!

Rating:

- "You are the most anonymous man I've ever known."
A complete change of focus from the gritty Arkady Renko mysteries set in Russia, this Martin Cruz Smith novel takes place in Wigam, a mining village in Victorian England. Jonathan Blair, formerly of Wigam but more recently of Africa, has been charged by the local bishop with the task of finding John Maypole, the curate to whom the bishop's daughter Charlotte is engaged. Blair is anxious to return to Africa, a place he'd found so comfortable in comparison to the staid and class-conscious place of his birth, that he'd been accused by others of having "gone native." The bishop will send him back to Africa only if he can find Maypole.

Though the setting and time are completely different from Cruz Smith's more familiar Russian novels, his sense of place and his ability to create vibrant settings, ... Read More

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