“Dumas Club, or the Shadow of Richelieu” is one of the best intellectual detective novels by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The novel is engaging and elegant; its plot is dizzyingly tangled, yet at the same time logically impeccably constructed.
The story takes place in a special world—the world of books. A hunter of rare editions roams Europe in search of a satanic tome that sent a medieval printer to the stake. The heroes of this tale are bibliophiles, antiquarian booksellers, bookbinders, and simply ardent lovers of literature. Some of them prefer “cloak and sword” novels, others detective stories, and a third group tries to unravel secrets hidden in works on demonology.