The Club Dumas

Middle-aged Lucas Corso is a tired and cynical 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' The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. Soon the unsuspecting Corso is 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' masterpiece.

©2007 Arturo P Reverte (P)2007 Phoenix Books, Inc.

Love, love, love this book

I don't hand out five stars across the board very often, but this is a fine example. Even though I don't like Roman Polanski (for obvious reasons), I loved the movie version of this and after finding out it was based on this book, I was quick to read it. So glad I did.

First off, there is so much packed within its six-hour run and it was so nice to come to realize that the movie was so nicely based on the story — which is, in fact, so much better than the movie. I do wish I would have read the book first before the movie, but not much you can do to change the past. The narrator was amazing in bringing the characters to life that at times I felt like I was watching the movie.

What I loved the most was that even though the movie was very close to the book, I was still delighted by how much was different from the movie. There were times I thought the book was going sideways and delving into the unbelievable, but then it veered quickly back into captivating. Honestly, I haven't loved a book like this for a long time, but it is easily within my top 10 of all time.

Fantastic narration

I recently finished The Secret History and still needed to scratch a similar itch. I picked up The Club Dumas since I am familiar with the film adaptation and it too has a similar dark academia vibe. The story is beautifully written and very close to the film adaptation, The Ninth Gate. The narrator has a very pleasant British accent and performs each character fantastically. I do think the film adaptation may be a slightly better story but I don’t regret the listen.