Read This Instead

The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Instead of reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, read this book. It is everything that Brown wanted to write, but failed. Brown's book was entertaining, slight, and preposterous; this book is entertaining but never slight, and it is a lot smarter than Brown's. They both present convoluted mysteries involving hidden references in the canon of great art (in this case, in literature).

Lucas Corso is a rare book mercenary: he tracks down rare titles for dealers and collectors, and he's very good at it. He is hired to authenticate some pages that purport to be an early draft of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers. At the same time, he's hired to track down a genuine copy of an obscure occult book that is supposed to tell readers how to summon Satan. A convoluted series of events ensues, and Corso becomes convinced that the two manuscripts are related, as people turn up dead, a mysterious young woman appears to "protect" him, and people who seem to have sprung wholly formed from Dumas's novels haunt his steps.

It was turned into a movie directed by Roman Polanski called The Ninth Gate, which was awful. I wonder if they read the book at all? I realize that books and movies are different creatures, but they excised approximately half of the plot, which happened to be the web that tied everything together. The movie was almost entirely nonsensical. This book, on the other hand, is a wonderful gift for book lovers.