The Club Dumas

A bibliophile mystery sounded to me like a great read. Between my love of reading, the theme surrounding classic serials and a good old fashioned whodunit I had visions of atmospheric academia oozing old book smell with rainy streets and quaint bookstores. But I don't think The Dumas Club quite lived up to my expectations. Although I did mostly enjoy the story and it did manage that atmosphere in spades, I wasn't quite as taken with it as I had expected.
It was not a bad book and was enjoyable enough, but I don't think it really captured me enough to garner higher praise. Part of it may have been the over abundance of female characters reduced to long passages of physical traits rather than personalities. While I don't mind a bit of physical attraction references, it felt sometimes almost derogatory in this book. Not a single female character was more than a pair of legs, thighs, breasts or open lips and all of them apparently were attractive and knew it. I got tired of the constant descriptions in this manor. Also, the love interest just appears mysteriously and just as mysteriously is in love with the protagonist Corso and is never really resolved why or matures beyond a single sexual encounter and her following him around like a lost puppy.
The mystery itself was also just okay. I don't think it blew my mind or really had me chomping at the bit to know what was going to happen next. It is tied up at the end, but will probably depend on the reader whether they think it is satisfactory or not. I wasn't blown away. Other than Corso, we don't get a chance to get to know many of the other characters, so they remain aloof for most of the story, which is perhaps intended, but I would have rather known more about them and their motivations as it could have fleshed out the mystery a lot more.
Overall, I felt it was an okay read, but nothing super special. It has a lot of potential, but just doesn't manage to make a huge impression.

The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte

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I came to this book after watching the Roman Polanski/Johnny Depp movie “The Ninth Gate.” In the movie, Johnny Depp is a book buyer named Corso. He is hired by Balkan (Frank Langella) to compare Balkan's copy of a demonic book said to have been written by Satan with two other known copies. Balkan is a Satanist who wants the book because of its reputation of being a book by which Satan can be summoned. On his trip, Corso is attacked by other people who are after the book. Murders occur and the other copies mysteriously disappear or are destroyed. Along the way, Corso is befriended by a mysterious, beautiful young woman, who at random times floats down stairs in “watch or you'll miss it” scenes that are never mentioned or explained.

After reading the book by Arturo Peretz-Reverte, I have a much better idea of how the pieces fit together. In the Reverte novel, the Satanist is not Balkan, at all, but someone else. Balkan is the narrator of the story, at least in the parts that are first person. Reverte's novel stitches together two unrelated mysteries: one being the pursuit of the Ninth Gate book mystery, the other being a folio of handwritten notes concerning a chapter of the Three Musketeers by Dumas. The novel was revised to eliminate the latter plot and move characters around to serve the former. That's why Balkan becomes the Satanist in the movie. Likewise, “the girl” remains mysterious, but we get a better understanding of what her mysterious mission is.

I enjoyed the book far more than the movie. The book did provide two mysteries, one involving the satanic book, the other involving the Dumas manuscript. We are led down the primrose path by one of the mysteries. The Corso character was engaging. The “girl” was mysterious and probably a fallen angel. The story moved along at a nice clip.

Very literate and well-translated but I expected more at the end.

Eh.

It was okay. I might have liked it better had I read The Three Musketeers previously. There a few unnecessary sex scenes and some complicated machinations that became unrealistic. I did like the way the narrator was tied in to the story. It seemed to end rather abruptly as well. So overall eh.

To my big surprise I found out that this is the novel the somewhat weird movie “The Ninth Gate” is based on... I like the book lot better than the movie.