The Dumas Club

Description

In the world of rare books everything has its price. But when the book is a satanic tract, the currency is not money but life. A well-know bibliophile is found hanged days after selling a rare manuscript of Alexander Dumas's classic, The Three Musketeers. Across Madrid, Spain's wealthiest book dealer has finally laid his hands on a 17th-century manual for summoning the devil. Lucas Corso, solitary and obsessive, is the detective hired to authenticate both texts. But the further he follows the trail of devil worship, the more it leads him back to Dumas. He's the unwitting protagonist in someone's evil plot, but is he sleuth or hero, Sherlock Holmes or d'Artagnan?

Arturo Perez-Reverte was born in Cartagena in 1951. Since the publication of The Fencing Master, his first novel, Perez-Reverte has become one of Europe's bestselling authors. The Flanders Panel was awarded the Grand Prix Annuel de Litterature Policiere in France. His novel The Dumas Club has been made into the film The Ninth Gate by Roman Polanski, starring Johnny Depp.

A dizzyingly complicated, dazzlingly allusive, breathlessly exciting novel of adventure and detection -- Michael Kerrigan * Scotsman * A noir meta-fiction. Even a reader armed with a Latin dictionary and a copy of The Three Musketeers cannot anticipate the thrilling twists of this Escher-like mystery * New Yorker * A sophisticated and exciting intellectual game which brilliantly illustrates the sheer delight of fiction -- Stephanie Merritt * Daily Telegraph * A rip-roaring entertainment - tongue in cheek and sword in hand * Mail on Sunday *