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.
Rating:
Summary: Mind Candy (not to be swallowed by everyone)
Review: "The Club Dumas" kept me at home, curled up in bed the whole weekend despite a long-awaited Saturday rave. It was THAT good.The plot is enough to keep you on edge until the last line. It starts of with an investigation on the suicide of a well-known bookseller, who had left a manuscript of "The Anjou Wine", a chapter of Alexander Dumas' "The Three Musketeers". Lucas Corso, the central character of the novel, is a book detective hired to authenticate the manuscript. His investigation leads him to a vortex of mysterious events, and he becomes involved in puzzling murder scenes and even demonology. To add to his stange experiences are the people he meets, who bear a puzzling resemblance to characters in the Dumas masterpiece. This book was so interesting. It had twists and surprises that didn't use tired formulas of old mystery novels. I must add, though, that this book may not be enjoyed by everyone. If you're looking for an easy, fast read, well, you might have to think twice before reading this. There are various allusions to classic literature (particularly 19th century French literature), medieval history, religion and demonology. A reader not versed in Dumas' works may get confused. (And I haven't even mentioned all the Latin phrases yet). I DO recommend this book, however, to all bibliophiles, fans of classic literature and murder mystery genres. All the little literary tidbits, particularly on Alexander Dumas, will be mind candy, indeed. The author, Perez-Reverte, was compared by some critics to Umberto Eco in this novel. I have to disagree a bit, though...for although "The Club Dumas" resembles "Foucault's Pendulum" in that it freely alludes to history, ancient texts and esoteria, finding connections to otherwise unrelated events, I think that Perez-Reverte's writing is easier to take in. ( I didn't need a dictionary for the first sentence). The plot of "Club Dumas" also reminds me of another, not-very-known book, "The Eight" by Catherine Neville, because of the protagonist's entanglement with juicy puzzles and references to historical figures. I was also particularly impressed by the ending of the novel, which I thought was clever. Not a lot of books I've read these days have endings that satisfy me. (Hell, not a lot of books can keep me antisocial for the weekend!)
Rating: 
Summary: Club Dumas
Review: The book trade and the Devil, arguably never very far apart in the first place, meet in this literary mystery novel.
I read this after watching the movie The Ninth Gate which is based on it, and I actually liked the movie better, because it had more artistic unity -- also because, since I don't personally care for the works of Dumas very much, the fact that the movie left that whole plot thread out was fine with me. I suspect not all viewers/readers would feel the same.
I thought CD was an intelligent and interesting book, a bit awkwardly phrased at times as I find literature in translation tends to be, though there were also some nice images. I would have liked it to be a bit more emotionally involving. It would appeal, I think, to people who like Dunning's book-trade mysteries, and who read Dumas, and there's also a sideways connection to Mary Gentle's excellent novel 1610: A Sundial In A Grave. I liked CD enough to seek out the author's other work.
Rating: 
Summary: call in the book doctor
Review: The Club Dumas is a very intriguing story, and is certainly worth reading for that alone. I give it two stars for that. However, it is unfortunate that a good book doctor didn't have a crack at this. In addition to numerous spelling errors, the author frequently runs off on tangents that are completely irrelevant to the book. I found these tangents to be most irritating. For example, the author goes into a lot of detail about certain characters early in the book. However, these characters are never mentioned again, nor is there any reason to mention them. Additionally, there are many places where the descriptions of things become pretty wild and strange. For example, in chapter IX, there is a description that reads, "And at the table next to Corso's, a couple of very elegant Africans kissing on the mouth in a leisurely way, as if they had all the time in the world and as if the arms race, AIDS, and the hole in the ozone layer were all insignificant on that sunny Parisian morning." Huh? I should point out that this sentence has little to do with anything in the book. I suppose it's supposed to give a feel for the "mood" of the scene, but I think this could have been accomplished with less lofty (and irrelevant) wording.
The book is also fraught with grammatical errors, which should really not appear in a finalized manuscript. For example, from chapter XIV, "..., as if he not knowing where to point it." This sounds like a spam email asking for help with some former African dictator's money.
There are similarities with Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum". It is nice, however, that there is a concise end, where things come together and are explained. It is also nice to be able to read it without a dictionary close at hand.
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: 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: 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: Impressive writing.
Review: The quality of this book's prose was very accomplished and the general subject matter was interesting with regard to book-binding and forgeries. I can't say that the plot was entirely convincing because their was no particularly strong reason for Corso to not simply hand over the chapter he got from LaPonte, and he could easily have stolen the `The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows' from Fargas, himself, or Balkan could have done so, too, since he killed Fargas for it anyway.
I found the line drawings/engravings good to look at.
The film adaptation `The Ninth Gate, was a surprisingly good one, but it too had a few plot flaws.
That said, it reads well. and would encourage reading more books by this author.
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