The Spanish inquisition, and the Grand Inquisitor himself, are the subjects of Torquemada, a brief, intense, and thoroughly disappointing novel….

Mr. Fast is here confronting powerful themes: the passions that lead men to do evil in the name of God and the Good, the meaning of freedom of conscience. But the treatment is heavy-handed, rigid, portentous, abstract. Mr. Fast does not appear to be at home in the Spanish milieu…. In art, impossibilities that are made to seem likely are much more effective than anomalous truths…. In the case of Torquemada, Mr. Fast may have no more than the facts on his side.

Emile Capouya, "Evil in the Name of Good," in Saturday Review (copyright © 1966 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. XLIX, No. 4, January 22, 1966, p. 43.