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CLUB_DUMAS

                                              March 2, 2005
I just read "The Club Dumas"
(1993) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte,     
and it turns out to be a decent                 ESOTERICA_THRILLER
example of the Esoterica Thriller.

A nihilistic book expert is
drawn into an intrigue              That is to say,
involving a Dumas manuscript        a man whose
and a Satanist work published       relationship
in Venice in 1666: "Book of         with books has     He obsesses with
the Nine Doors to the Kingdom       deteriorated       re-fighting
of Shadows".                        into the purely    Waterloo via
                                    professional.      historical
                                                       wargame, however...
Much is made about how someone
seems to be engineering events                             QUOTE_OF_QUOTES
that are much like events from
Dumas books, and there were
moments when I feared that all        (I mean, he even namedrops
would degenerate into                 "Umberto Eco", who I suspect
postmodern metafictional froth        does a cameo appearence in a
                                      crowd scene as well)
But mostly it all holds up, and
along the way there are many
excuses for trotting out
minutiae about the hisorical
sources Dumas raided for The
Musketeers, the contribution
of his anonymous collaborator
Auguste Maquet, Dumas'
scandalous mistress Adah
Menken...  all of which is the
real life-blood of the
Esoterica Thriller.

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