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Quote of the Moment:
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The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.
— Felix Adler |
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Book Review: The Club Dumas by Perez-Reverte
Posted on Sunday 30 December @ 10:00:00
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Every week HGLEE.COM will make a book recommendation. Each book will have a brief review and a quick link to Amazon, should you decide to pick up a copy for yourself. This week's selection: The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte.
An intricate adventure for book lovers of all kinds...There are few stories that grab bibliophiles more readily than the mysterious pusuit of an allegedly nonexistent book. Couple that with Pérez-Reverte's introduction of protagonist Lucas Corso, an entirely new breed of book detective (a scholarly mercenary with sometimes questionable acquisition methods), and you've got the edgy, intellectual hybrid of John Dunning crossed with Umberto Eco.
As utterly engrossing as this story is, however, the reader is subjected to very little of the pedantry found in Umberto Eco's works. Like Eco, Pérez-Reverte unfolds a captivating story; unlike Eco, the reader is not confronted with the sinking suspicion that the author is merely showing off his scholarship.
Corso's charter is to track down a rare—some say nonexistent—iteration of the 1666 Torchia edition of The Nine Doors, a book rumored to have the most sinister of pedigrees. In the course of tracking down one of the last three known copies, Corso begins to unravel another mystery related to the cult-like writings of Alexandre Dumas. As Corso draws closer to the truth behind both mysteries, he and the reader begin to become very much a part of the mystery itself.
Pérez-Reverte's skill at framing the puzzle is perhaps his greatest attribute, and it truly shines in this tale. Like Eco's characters in Foucault's Pendulum, Pérez-Reverte merely sets the stage and lets the players participate as they deem appropriate. By the end of the tale, the participants in this story are much, much wiser about the dangers of life imitating art. The characters and discoveries in Corso's quest leave us all aware of the hazards of belief without reason—of carrying the passions found in the fictional world into the real world without regard to reality.
Purchase:
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