Dumas club, or shadow Richelieu

Arturo Perevo-Reverte

In the series "Cure for Boredom" the long-awaited translation of the bestseller of the Spanish intellectual and the master of elegant puzzles Arturo Perezaerte was released. The most translated modern Spanish author is well familiar to us from the novels “Leather for the drum” and “Flemish board”, and the film of Roman Polanski “Ninth Gate” with handsome Johnny Depp not only went at the Russian rental, but was shown more than once on television. However, those who watched this film, shot just on the “Dumas Club”, will find with pleasant surprise that the book is more interesting and interesting.

Two rarities fall into the hands of Lucas Corso, a tired erudite hunter, a tired erudite and a burned cynic: the manuscript of the forty-second chapter of the “three musketeers” “Anjou wine” and a black binding book “Nine Gates in the Kingdom of Shadows”, Venice, 1666, Infolio, 160 pages and 9 xylographs whose plots are plots of which are plots. Allegedly were prompted by the master Lucifer himself. The book makes it possible to call the prince of darkness, but only to those who manage to solve its secret cipher. The Venetian printer for the publication of this book was burned at the stake, betrayed the fire and the whole circulation, only one book survived, but in the meetings of different collectors of Europe there are three of them, and Corso's task to find the only original who opens the gates of hell. Books are the same in everything, only engravings differ in detail, and this is the key. In parallel, Lucas Corso establishes the authenticity of the harmless manuscript from childhood of the reading-re-readable “three musketeers”. But events acquire a rather gloomy turn, and between two texts, strange connections are planned. The owner of the manuscript was found hanged, the owner of one of the copies of the Nine Gates was recessed, the baroness - the mistress of the third copy, burned down, and the hero is haunted by a stranger with a scar and a blond woman with tattered lilia. And somewhere the shadow looms either his highlands of Cardinal Richelieu, or Satan himself. In the course of this literary investigation, Corso lends itself to a temptation of intertextuality, builds connections, logical and beautiful, but erroneous. The solution is simple and banal, but how much the logic of literature exceeds the logic of reality, and the detective is more inventive both of life and the killers combined! The whole book is an elegant curtsy towards Umberto Eco, the master even appears on the last pages of the novel.

Do not depreciate the detective, handing over the ending, moreover, to be honest, it is a little disappointed and clearly composed on the principle of a more or less logical information of the ends meet. However, David Lynch did not know how to get out of the story with Lao Palmer, and Eco himself hardly figured out the world conspiracy of the Rosicrucians.

Anna Osterman