Rating: 
Summary: An Anjou Wine
Review: "This mystery is considered insoluble for the very same reasons that should lead one to consider it soluble"The Club Dumas follows the adventures of Lucas Corso, a cross between a mercenary and an antique book dealer. He has been given the task of authenticating a rare book - one that can be used to summon Lucifer himself. But, as Corso begins to uncover the secrets of the book and its printer, he is involved in another mystery. He is followed by characters that bear such a striking resemblance to Dumas's most famous serial, the Three Musketeers, that he begins to delve deeper into the fiction that has become his existence. The Club Dumas is a fascinating read. It is an adventure story in its own right. Woven into the text, however, is commentary on intertextualism, the meaning of literature, and man's relationship with the occult. Perez-Reverte does an especially good job of setting the scenes which are presented in the book - the reader feels the antiquity and beauty of the European villages which are the setting. Overall, a fascinating read and highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't quite hang together
Review: A book acquirer -- buyer if possible, thief if necessary -- gets sent on a slightly metafictive mission. He's an interesting character, obsessed with recreating the battle of Waterloo so that Napoleon wins, but a bit emotionally distant from the action. There's one plot that's all about The Three Musketeers and another plot that's all about summoning the devil. The one about the Three Musketeers is all a bit crossword-puzzley and precious. The one about summoning the devil is more interesting, but the tone of the book is slightly wrong for it -- it never quite makes you scared the way it should, everything is too prosaic and brightly lit, and there are no shadows for interesting things to hide in, though there's a blunt, casual sexiness that creeps in every so often that I quite liked.
Rating:
Summary: Deliciously dark and enthralling; good background to movie
Review: After thoroughly enjoying the movie 'The Ninth Gate' by Roman Polanski, I felt compelled to read the book behind the movie. My impulse was - if the movie was so good, the book can only be better!
The book was an engrossing read. The dark, mysterious atmosphere prevails throughout, as it does in the movie. I would recommend the book in its own right, but I found the scriptwriters' adaptation of the book to be a far more potent and unified story.
The two differ in a number of ways (don't worry, no spoilers below):
1. The film reworks many characters, particularly that of Balkan.
2. The book contains two plot threads (the Dumas manuscript and the 'Nine doors' book), whereas the movie focuses on one - the more intriguing one, in my opinion. The movie is very economical and direct, traits not as evident in the book.
I found myself admiring the scriptwriters' work of sifting the 'relevant/important' material from the 'peripheral/distracting' and still managing to capture the book's feel, and occassionally even dialogue. The characters in the film are more powerful and driven. I'm not sure how well a script more 'true to the book' would have translated into film.
3. On the other hand, the book has a philosophical depth lacking in the movie, specifically the idea of 'the Devil in love.' One is almost moved to sympathy. Eventhough this formed part of the main plot thread, it has no mention in the movie.
Also, the 'Dumas manuscript' plot thread adds a lot of interesting detail into novel writing and manufacture in those days.
4. Lastly, I found the ending of the movie more satisfying than that of the book.
In summary, the book is an enthralling read, deliciously dark and mystifying, with food for thought too. Fans of the movie may find it a little disappointing but, at least, an interesting background to the movie.
Rating:
Summary: I feel like I have to apologize for not loving it.
Review: Alright, so please don't shoot me, but I didn't love it. Maybe I just need to get over the fact that if I spend the rest of my life looking for another Flanders Panel, I'm just not going to find it. I guess what we think of books depends a lot on what's happening when we read them, and I loved that book. From the description of the Club Dumas, I really thought it was going to be similar, and maybe my disappointment is more about my expectations than this novel's merits.
Anyway, I read Dumas back to back with the Nauatical Chart, and I had almost the exact opposite reaction to the two novels. With Nautical Chart, I could see all of its flaws while I was reading it, and many of them were severe. It distracted me the whole way, and I tried not to let it get me down, and even now I can list them to you and in an objective way understand why some of them were pretty unforgivable. But at the end of that book, I had a smile on my face and have many fond feelings for it.
Club Dumas was the exact opposite. It is breathtaking in places. The author maneuvers around the interwoven tales so deftly and subtly that while you are reading, you understand you are holding a work of a man with considerable skills reserved for few. Corso is an amazingly likeable fellow, and the book plays to all of Perez-Reverte's strengths -- parallel detective stories that span multiple generations and interrelate in surprising and interesting ways. (Interestingly, he tried something similar in Nautical Chart, as is not surprising since it's something of his trademark, but did not succeed nearly as well.) The places Corso takes us are interesting; the people he meets are extraordinary creations, and the marriage of the Dumas theme with the quest of the strage characters he encounters is just great.
One also should applaud Perez-Reverte for the sheer ambitiousness of the project. He is plainly channeling Umberto Eco at every crucial juncture, as other reviewers have noted, and even where it is a conscious homage, he basically shoots for the top and hits his mark. The penultimate scene easily could be something right out of Foucault's Pendulum.
But, what can I say, I didn't love it. It left me unsatisfied at the end. I tired of some of the repetitive elements. I started losing interest. I had a little bit of sense at the end that the author had played a trick on me. I also thought some of the threads that I thought were so carefully woven together unravelled a little. (Although, I admit to not being nearly smart enough to understand about half -- if not more -- of the underlying stuff that the author was getting in there.)
The bottom line is that I was prepared to give this book between two and three stars, which is actually a pretty bad review for me. But I bumped it up for two reasons. First, the ambitiousness -- gotta give a guy credit for really shooting for the moon even if you don't think he got there. Second, and more important, there is one part of the book that is just priceless -- Corso's visit to old guy (forget his name) who is basically destitute and has to sell his beloved books off one at a time to survive and pay his taxes, while his estate turns to squalor. I really liked that character and those 30 pages are so were as entertaining to me as many full novels.
Rating:
Summary: An original, bizarre, convoluted thriller
Review: In Lucas Corso, Arturo Perez-Reverte has created an appealingly unappealing hero. Corso is a book detective, whose job is tracking down rare volumes for discerning collectors who don't mind using Corso to do their dirty work. And this he does with gusto, for, after all, he's being well paid for it. Corso will betray his best friend or sell his grandmother for a copy of a rare volume if the price is right. Perez draws us into the world of rare books and book dealers so convincingly that we can almost breathe in the dust of incunabula that have lain undiscovered and untouched for centuries. This time around, Corso has a double job ahead -- he has to verify if the recently discovered, unpublished chapter of Alexandre Dumas' "The Three Musketeers" is genuine, and he also needs to determine if a copy of "The Book of the Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows" is a forgery. "The Nine Doors", a volume written by Aristide Torchia which got him burned alive on the Campo Di Fiori near the end of the Inquisition, supposedly contains the secret of summoning the Devil up from Hell.
It turns out there are only three copies of "The Nine Doors" in the world; all the others were tossed onto the pyre along with their author. It's Corso's job to track them down and see if any, or all of them, are genuine or not. The secret may lie in nine illustrations in each volume, conveniently reproduced for the reader in "The Club Dumas", and Perez-Reverte has great fun in showing the reader how the nine illustrations in each volume differ from each other. So which book is a fake, or are all of them fakes? Corso tracks down two of the volumes, but lo and behold, there's devil and all to pay -- each owner meets a nasty death, and somebody with murder on his mind is on Corso's own track. But Corso isn't a detective for nothing; he not only resolves the question of the authenticity of the chapter of the Dumas novel, he discovers that part of each of the three volumes of "The Nine Doors" holds the secret to calling up Beelzebub from the netherworld. Only in the right combination can this be achieved, and it's the owner of the third volume who turns out to have commissioned Corso's search, in order to have all the ingredients at hand. As he and Corso both find out, everyone gets the devil he deserves.
Perez-Reverte has written a book with more twists and convolutions than a Chinese puzzle, which races along like a runaway freight train, but never careens out of control. For all the twist and turns, it knows where it's going, and carries the reader right along to the final page. For mystery fans and bibliophiles alike, it's a helluva joyride.
Rating: 
Summary: Book made me fan of Perez-Reverte will buy all his books!
Review: Many have compared this book to the Da Vinci code, I don't see it. I think the characters are much better in this book, and Perez Reverte goes more indepth on their motivations. Plus the translation is brilliant, the prose is beautiful! While the Da Vinci code was a faster paced affair. With both books I found myself running to the internet do research parts of the books I had just read. Great learning expierience from both books. Overall The Club Dumas was written better, and I found myself rooting for the characters more. Plus there were a couple laugh out loud momemts of dark humor I did not expect.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Mystery
Review: Perez-Reverte has developed a following as a mystery writer for the educated reader. The Club Dumas shares the strengths and the weaknesses of his other works. In the world of rare and expensive books, Corso is not a collector, but one who finds books on order for collectors. He is simply a mercenary who stumbles into two linked mysteries, one having to do with Alexandre Dumas's "The Three Musketeers" and the other with a 17th century satanic text. Corso's world is full of strange booksellers, erudite academics, and eccentric collectors. By following the plots of the books he is seeking, he manages to unravel the mysteries, more or less.
Perez-Reverte has done his homework. It's fun to be in the world of rare books that he creates. But as in his other works, his rich and detailed plot once again fails in the final chapters here. In "The Flanders Panel" and "The Nautical Chart", for example, after hundreds of wonderful pages of plot development, the stories collapse into banal and cardboard endings. "The Club Dumas" shows the same weaknesses. These are fun books, page turners for the middle-brow reader, but ultimately they leave the reader wishing they were more clearly executed.
Rating:
Summary: An intelligent tease but no real climax
Review: The Club Dumas is an interesting exercise in the craft of fiction. It tries, ultimately unsuccessfully I think, to blend a complex, deliberately artificial mystery plot with a number of elements of more serious fiction that are simply diminished by the artifice. An interesting cast of characters (especially Lucas Corso, the book hunter) is set in motion with multiple, seemingly unrelated, objectives which, over the course of the novel, come together in unexpected ways. There are multiple mysteries to solve and nothing is really as it seems. The reader is titillated constantly and kept expectant and in the dark. It isn't until the last few pages of the book that the mystery(s) are resolved - one after another in a cascading sequence of not very satisfactory revelations. That being said, it is important to note that I enjoyed almost every page of this book. From the inside information on antiquarian book dealers and forgers to the details of Alexander Dumas's working habits to all the esoteric details of Satanic manuscripts from the Middle Ages, the story is packed with detail that few book lovers can avoid finding interesting. But the story itself is ultimately unconvincing and the reader is left with very little emotional investment in the fate of the characters. If one doesn't mind an artful tease, knowing that the book won't go all the way, then this is still an interesting, if not satisfying, reading experience.
Rating:
Summary: Umberto Eco fans will love this one!
Review: The Club Dumas was an interesting mystery from start to finish. The main character, Corso, is a well-rounded, interesting character that could be classified as an anti-hero. The whole premise of seeking out other copies of a book written by the Devil and the misadventures associated with locating said copies was entertaining. I won't rehash the plot as that has been covered by other reviewers adequately, but I would like to say that I enjoyed this multi-layered story immensely as well as the allusions to other literary works. After reading this book I was inspired to read the Three Musketeers, Scaramouche, and The Devil in Love. Perez-Reverte does an excellent job of weaving history and literature into the plot without bogging the reader down. This is definitely a story that will be enjoyed by anyone who has read Foucault's Pendulum or The Name of the Rose. I have also seen The Ninth Gate, which was based on the book, but The Club Dumas was infinitely better and filled in more of the details as is usually the case with books vs. movies.
Rating:
Summary: Umberto Eco fans will love this one!
Review: The Club Dumas was an interesting mystery from start to finish. The main character, Corso, is a well-rounded, interesting character that could be classified as an anti-hero. The whole premise of seeking out other copies of a book written by the Devil and the misadventures associated with locating said copies was entertaining. I won't rehash the plot as that has been covered by other reviewers adequately, but I would like to say that I enjoyed this multi-layered story immensely as well as the allusions to other literary works. After reading this book I was inspired to read the Three Musketeers, Scaramouche, and The Devil in Love. Perez-Reverte does an excellent job of weaving history and literature into the plot without bogging the reader down. This is definitely a story that will be enjoyed by anyone who has read Foucalt's Pendulum or The Name of the Rose. I have also seen The Ninth Gate, which was based on the book, but The Club Dumas was infinitely better and filled in more of the details as is usually the case with books vs. movies.
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