Arturo Perez-Reverte' The Club Dumas

Arturo Perez-Reverte' The Club Dumas was written in 1996 in Spanish then

translated into English in 1998. A suspense thriller completely on its own. The story

follows Lucas Corso, a self-described book mercenary investigating two rare books: an

Alexandre Dumas manuscript of The Three Musketeers and an ancient satanic text

called The Nine Doors. Corso, slowly puts the pieces together in the two books as he

becomes part of a never-ending game leading to a secret society.

Corso is well described and developed, but the other characters lack depth, with only a

few exceptions. Some of the key characters appear only at least two times during the

overall plot, and in the end some are left unexplained and have no exit except to be left

in plot holes. Although some don't show up too much or are not developed enough they

are still interesting during in the interactions they have with the main character. Many of

the characters are referenced and based on others in popular books and movies. As

enjoyable as Corso is, its hard get past how narcissistic his character is, so it's kind of a

"love him or hate him" situation which is handled better in the movie (The Ninth Gate).

One of the characters, a mysterious girl who is a key player and love interest for Corso,

is developed well but seems too much like a mid-life crisis fantasy for Corso, but her role

is slightly better twist in the movie, as with most other things that didn't work in this book

but worked in the movie.

Arturo Perez-Reverte's stories in this seem to contain a lot of information of books, and

many characteristics of people I see in people I know now. is good on involving the

business of book collecting in most of the text and relating it to the story since it's about

a person studying books. Now that I have been reading this and many other books in the

past few months I have become quite familiar with the terms he uses relating to books

and how things are written and other things about collections of books. If there's a book I

really like I make