#1 International Bestseller "A thriller of marvelous intricacy" (The New York Times Book Review), The Club Dumas is a provocative literary thriller that playfully pays tribute to classic tales of mystery and adventure. Lucas Corso is a book detective, a middle-aged mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found dead, leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. He is soon drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious resemblance to those of Dumas's masterpiece. Aided by a mysterious beauty named for a Conan Doyle heroine, Corso travels from Madrid to Toledo to Paris on the killer's trail in this twisty intellectual romp through the book world."Erudite, funny, loopy, brilliant...action-adventure spied with dollops of idiosyncrasy — and some very good talk."—The Philadelphia Inquirer PRAISE FOR THE CLUB DUMAS "An intelligent and delightful novel." -THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "A cross between Umberto Eco and Anne Rice . . . Think of The Club Dumas as a beach read for intellectuals."-THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS #1 International Bestseller   "A thriller of marvelous intricacy."? The New York Times Book Review Lucas Corso is a book detective, a mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found hanged, leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers , Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. He is soon drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious resemblance to those of Dumas’ masterpiece. "Erudite, funny, loopy, brilliant . . . action-adventure spiced with dollops of idiosyncrasy?and some very good talk."? The Philadelphia Inquirer "A noir metafiction . . . Even a reader armed with a Latin dictionary and a copy of The Three Musketeers cannot anticipate the thrilling twists of this stylish, Escher-like mystery."? The New Yorker   Arturo Perez-Reverte is the internationally best-selling author of CAPTAIN ALATRISTE.  His books have been translated into twenty-nine languages in more than fifty countries and have sold millions of copies worldwide.  He lives in Spain and was elected to the Spanish Royal Academy in 2003. ARTURO PEREZ-REVERTE is the award-winning author of many critically acclaimed novels, including The Club Dumas, The Flanders Panel, and the Captain Alatriste series. A retired war journalist, he lives in Madrid and is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. The Club Dumas By Arturo Perez-Reverte Harvest Books Copyright ©2006 Arturo Perez-Reverte All right reserved. ISBN: 9780156032834 I. "THE ANJOU WINE" The reader must be prepared to witness the most sinister scenes. -E. Sue, THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS My name is Boris Balkan and I once translated The Charterhouse of Parma. Apart from that, I've edited a few books on the nineteenth-century popular novel, my reviews and articles appear in supplements and journals throughout Europe, and I organize summer-school courses on contemporary writers. Nothing spectacular, I'm afraid. Particularly these days, when suicide disguises itself as homicide, novels are written by Roger Ackroyd's doctor, and far too many people insist on publishing two hundred pages on the fascinating emotions they experience when they look in the mirror. But let's stick to the story. I first met Lucas Corso when he came to see me; he was carrying "The Anjou Wine" under his arm. Corso was a mercenary of the book world, hunting down books for other people. That meant talking fast and getting his hands dirty. He needed good reflexes, patience, and a lot of luck-and a prodigious memory to recall the exact dusty corner of an old man's shop where a book now worth a fortune lay forgotten. His clientele was small and select: a couple of dozen book dealers in Milan, Paris, London, Barcelona, and Lausanne, the kind that sell through catalogues, make only safe investments, and never handle more than fifty or so titles at any one time. High-class dealers in early printed books, for whom thousands of dollars depend on whether something is parchment or vellum or three centimeters wider in the margin. Jackals on the scent of the Gutenberg Bible, antique-fair sharks, auction-room leeches, they would sell their grandmothers for a first edition. But they receive their clients in rooms with leather sofas, views of the Duomo or Lake Constance, and they never get their hands-or their consciences-dirty. That's what men like Corso are for. He took his canvas bag off his shoulder and put it on the floor by his scuffed oxfords. He stared at the framed portrait of Rafael Sabatini that stands o