[EnWorld Book Club] Next Selection: The Club Dumas.

nikolai · Aug 31, 2004

Hello all;

After some consideration I've made the next selection for the EnWorld Book Club. It is the The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte. It's a highly regarded mystery with fantastic elements.

Discussion in due to start on the 15th of October.

Links: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk.

Lucas Corso, middle-aged, tired, and cynical, is a book detective, a mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found hanged, leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment.

The task seems straightforward, but the unsuspecting Corso is soon drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious resemblance to those of Dumas's masterpiece. Aided by a mysterious beauty named for a Conan Doyle heroine, Corso travels from Madrid to Toledo to Paris in pursuit of a sinister and seemingly omniscient killer. Part mystery, part puzzle, part witty intertextual game, The Club Dumas is a wholly original intellectual thriller by the internationally bestselling author of The Flanders Panel and The Seville Communion.

First Chapter: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0679777547&view=excerpt

Book Club Main thread: http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=91597

A shout out for the next selector is currently taking place
here! Get your name down while you still can!

nikolai · Aug 31, 2004

I thought I’d post a few words about Perez-Reverte to put The Dumas Club in some sort of wider context. Arturo Perez-Reverte is a very successful Spanish author who has a very distinctive line in thrillers. The Dumas Club was shortlisted for the for the 1998 World Fantasy Awards, but was subsequently declared ineligible because of a previous UK edition. It has also been filmed as The Ninth Gate by Roman Polanski, with Johnny Depp in the lead role; though the book is very different from the film.

Perez-Reverte’s other books include The Fencing Master, in which an ageing swordsman finds himself embroiled in a deadly plot, and which I can honestly say contains the best sword fight I’ve ever read. The Flanders Panel, a murder mystery which surrounds a painting of a game of chess, which conceals a hidden message. The Seville Communion in which a Vatican trouble-shooter is called to investigate a series of strange deaths occurring in a Seville church. The Nautical Chart which follows the hunt for the wreck of a Jesuit ship sunk by pirates in 1767. His latest book is the The Queen of the South, in which the lead character is given a phone, which if it ever rings, means that her boyfriend is dead, and whoever killed him is coming for her.

A longer look at Perez-Reverte’s books can be found here http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/535038/026-8028480-3178060

He has also written a series of old fashioned swashbucklers which revolve around Captain Alatriste; a swordsman in seventeenth-century Spain who hires out his skill with a blade. These are insanely popular where they’ve been published, and are currently being made into a film staring Viggo Mortensen and Elena Anaya. English translations are currently in the works.

Thanks to everyone who’s posted on both this and the earlier threads. Hope you all enjoy the book.

Cthulhu's Librarian · Aug 31, 2004

Damn good choice! Club Dumas was one of the best books I read last year. I may read it again.

JoeBlank · Aug 31, 2004

Interesting selection, a nice change of pace.

And Cthulhu's Librarian has excellent tastes, in my experience.

Plus it is available at my local library. Just reserved my copy.

Wombat · Aug 31, 2004

Well, since I am in the middle of the Dumas' The Three Musketeers (third time round), it seems appropriate that I should try this book as well!

Cthulhu's Librarian · Aug 31, 2004

JoeBlank said:
And Cthulhu's Librarian has excellent tastes, in my experience.

Well, thank you!

Wombat said:
Well, since I am in the middle of the Dumas' The Three Musketeers (third time round), it seems appropriate that I should try this book as well!

And an excellent companion book to The Club Dumas it is, as you will see while reading them together.

Someone · Aug 31, 2004

nikolai said:
He has also written a series of old fashioned swashbucklers which revolve around Captain Alatriste; a swordsman in seventeenth-century Spain who hires out his skill with a blade. These are insanely popular where they’ve been published, and are currently being made into a film staring Viggo Mortensen and Elena Anaya. English translations are currently in the works.

If you allow me the interruption, there´s even a roleplaying game about it; for what I heard, it´s pretty good.

nikolai · Aug 31, 2004

Someone said:
If you allow me the interruption, there´s even a roleplaying game about it; for what I heard, it´s pretty good.

Wow, that's really interesting. I googled on the game a bit, and it looks like it will be out in an english translation sooner than the books!

http://www.rpg.net/forums/phorum/rf08/read.php?f=2398&i=46&t=1

Tanager · Sep 1, 2004

Good choice, I just finished reading about two weeks ago.

On a slight tangent, The Club Dumas isn't the only Reverte mystery to be turned into a movie. The Flanders Panel was rendered as Uncovered in 1994 starring the always easy to watch Kate Beckinsale.