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THE CLUB DUMAS
From Publishers Weekly
The hero of Spanish author Perez-Reverte's freewheeling, ambitious literary mystery is Lucas Corso, an itinerant rare-book hunter who'd gladly sell his grandmother for a first edition. When a wealthy cookbook publisher and bibliophile is found hanged in his study, leaving behind an original handwritten chapter from Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, antiquarian book dealer Flavio LaPorte asks his friend Corso to authenticate the manuscript. What begins as a straightforward assignment soon complicates into a bewildering tangle of literary gamesmanship as the book detective finds himself swept into a real-life adventure-serial and crime novel rolled into one. As the action shifts from Madrid to Portugal to Paris, the intrepid, bad-tempered, gin-swilling Corso encounters a host of intriguing characters, including devil worshippers, obsessed book collectors and a hypnotically appealing femme fatale. Suspense-filled and ingenious, Perez-Reverte's latest (after The Flanders Panel) is also something of a primer on the rare-book business and a witty meditation on the relationship between book lovers and the texts they adore. Rights: Howard Morhaim.
From Library Journal
Perez-Reverte, who proved with The Flanders Panel (LJ 6/15/94) that art history and chess can mix to create suspense, is back with another literate mystery. Here the focus is on literature, particularly the world of antiquarian books, which proves much less stuffy than one might expect. Lucas Corso, a "mercenary of the book world [who hunted] down books for other people," gets more than he bargained for when he seeks to authenticate a manuscript of Chapter 42 of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers. The manuscript was purchased from Enrique Taillefer, a publisher subsequently found hanged, and it leads him on a search for the original of The Book of the Nine Doors to the Kingdom of Darkness, a work of the occult that was banned in the 17th century. So why is a man with a scar trying to kill Corso, and why is Taillefer's lubricious widow using her wiles to get back the Dumas chapter? This book takes a little longer to heat up than The Flanders Panel, possibly because the misansthropic Corso is not as as attractive a protagonist as Flanders's heroine, but soon the chase is on?and it's as suspenseful as any mystery buff could want. The learned detail about early printing, the occult, and Dumas is just as stimulating. Highly recommended for readers who want their thrills a cut above the average.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
The New York Times Book Review, Margot Livesey
Mr. Pérez-Reverte . . . is extremely good on the business of book collecting. Among the pleasures of The Club Dumas is the intimate sense it conveys of this highly specialized type of commerce, with its appreciation of certain authors. . . . Mr. Pérez-Reverte does an admirable job of describing these bibliophiles, as well as of creating works like "The Nine Doors," whose illustrations are reproduced and described in fascinating detail.
From AudioFile
Here we have a canny mystery from Spain, ingenious, literate and possessed of masterful characterization. A rare manuscript of a THREE MUSKETEERS chapter leads a swashbuckling antiquarian on a sleuthing expedition involving murder, sexy women and satanism. Bibliophiles will enjoy the authentic details of the rare book trade. Lovers of good writing and suspense will find plenty of other attributes. British actor David Warner performs in a laid-back style--or rather, in a singularly worldly style, as befits this urbane volume. This is not to say that he lacks passion. The timbre of his voice is itself exciting, and he's always in sync with the mood, atmosphere, action and characters. What on the printed page would be delicious light reading becomes on cassette a tour de force. B.S. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
Perez-Reverte has plundered the works of Dumas and Conan Doyle, borrowed from demonology and the occult, filched from American hard-boiled mysteries, incorporated contemporary literary criticism, and come up with a novel that's witty, suspenseful, and intellectually provocative. Rare book sleuth Lucas Corso has been hired to find the two other existing copies of the seventeenth-century Book of the Nine Doors to the Kingdom of Darkness, reputed to hold the key to conjuring Satan. Somehow this search becomes tangled up with the original manuscript of Dumas' Three Musketeers, which has, in a most labyrinthine manner, just come into Corso's hands. He travels from Madrid to Paris in search of Book of the Nine Doors, pursued by a scarred thug and a Kim Novak double. Perez-Reverte, author of the stylish Flanders Panel (1994), drops enough deconstructive one-liners to put some distance between the reader and the text. Necessary reminders, as it turns out, since ultimately the real mystery of The Club Dumas lies not so much in the story itself as in what the reader has created from it. Brian Kenney
From Kirkus Reviews
An intricate and very bookish mystery novel--set, in fact, in the rarefied world of book collecting and dealing--from the sophisticated Spanish author of The Flanders Panel (1994, not reviewed). The story begins with the hiring of professional ``book- hunter'' Lucas Corso by Boris Balkan, a translator and collector who seeks authentication of a handwritten manuscript chapter of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers that has fortuitously, as they say, come into his possession. Traveling back and forth between Paris and Madrid, Corso matches wits with Liana Taillefer, whose husband's suicide was somehow connected with his ownership of the Delomelanicon, an illustrated medieval volume said to contain secret instructions for summoning the devil, and of which only two other copies are known to exist. Corso is soon involved in a byzantine international intrigue carried on by those who want, or have information about, the Dumas chapter and the infernal Delomelanicon, including: urbane and ruthless bookseller Varo Borja; an aged German baroness; a threatening man with a facial scar whom his quarry Corso bemusedly nicknames ``Rochefort'' (after Dumas); and a preternaturally self-possessed teenaged girl who says she's Irene Adler (this being the name of Sherlock Holmes's most infamous mystery woman). P‚rez-Reverte plaits all these teasing strands together with imperturbable skill, leaving the reader wondering until almost the final pages about the significance of his seductive title, and the allegation that Alexandre Dumas's narrative genius was the result of his pact with Satan. A lot happens in this novel, despite its constant recourse to prearranged meetings and extended conversations, and its enormity of detail about the nuts and bolts of book manufacture, publishing, searching, and dealing. Bibliophiles will love this witty and clever fabrication, though its very specialized content may place it just outside the range of the general reader. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Amazon.com
Fallen angels, satanic manuals, and a passion for the works of Raphael Sabatini and Alexandre Dumas among others--this is the stuff of Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte's engrossing novel The Club Dumas. Set in a world of antiquarian booksellers where dealers would gladly betray their own mothers to get their hands on a rare volume, The Club Dumas is a thinking person's thriller: in addition to a riveting plot, the book is full of intriguing details that range from the working habits of Alexandre Dumas to how one might go about forging a 17th-century text. Woven through these meditations is enough murder, sex, and the occult to keep both the hero, Lucas Corso, and the reader hopping.
As in his previous novel, The Flanders Panel, set in the world of art restoration, Mr. Pérez-Reverte has written a literary thriller to tease both the intellect and adrenaline gland. Lucas Corso makes a complex, ultimately sympathetic hero, and there's plenty to delight in the intricate twists and turns the story takes before the mystery of The Club Dumas is finally solved.
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