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The Club Dumas cover art

The Club Dumas

By: Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Narrated by: David Warner
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Summary

Lucas Corso, middle-aged, tired, and cynical, 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 of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment.

Soon the unsuspecting Corso is 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.

©2006 Arturo Perez-Reverte (P)2009 Phoenix

Critic reviews

"Suspense-filled and ingenious, Perez-Reverte's latest...is also something of a primer on the rare-book business and a witty meditation on the relationship between book lovers and the texts they adore. ( Publishers Weekly)
" The Club Dumas is a thinking person's thriller: in addition to a riveting plot, the book is full of intriguing details that range from the working habits of Alexandre Dumas to how one might go about forging a 17th-century text. Woven through these meditations is enough murder, sex, and the occult to keep both the hero, Lucas Corso, and the reader hopping." (Amazon.com review)

What listeners say about The Club Dumas

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Please don't bother -Its Broken & poorly edited.

(NO SPOILERS)
First off this is more a review of the actual Audiobook than the book itself.

I have been on Audible for about 8 months now (took a break for two months) and I can honestly say this is the worst audiobook I've heard on here. I used to wonder "Why would anybody refund an audiobook?" but after listening to this i can honestly understand why.

I am a HUGE fan of the plot hole filled movie and have always wanted to give the book a try. Since discovering Audible I've had this in my sights for sometime.
The Audiobook is obviously abridged and because of that you expect HUGE chunks to be cut out or trimmed down. What you do not expect are huge story details of VERY important information to be cut out. For example - In one part of the Audiobook you're listening to the narrator explain a scene where Corso (The main character) is entering his hotel when he meets somebody. As the tension is building the scene randomly changes to him sitting in his hotel room watching a person (not the same person as he met outside) leave it... You have NO idea who this person was, why this person was there or how they got in or what they said while they were in there. However, it's all there in the book and is needed to understand whats going on. If they had left out that a person was in his hotel room that would have been one thing. But to open a scene with "He/she(no spoilers) walked towards the door and said 'You'll be seeing me again' " followed by the thoughts of the main character on the conversation that we, as the read, were not a party to is totally confusing.
It feels like a very poor edit and leaves you confused. This happens multiple times through the book and makes it VERY hard to follow the story without watching the Movie OR reading the book previously.

Broken:
There are parts of the book that randomly jump ahead mid conversation. There is a scene where Corso is talking on the phone and mid word the audiobook jumps to a scene where he's talking to a person in a bar. At first I thought it was just a corrupted download but the same thing happens on my Echo dot (streaming). This has happened three times and i'm only half way through the story.

After reading the reviews it seems I am not the only person to find these 'bugs' and poor edits. I am in contact with audible via Twitter however, i don't seem to be getting anywhere. If that changes and/or they fix it i'll change my review.

If you're after a review of the story then to put it quite simply - It's AMAZING...At least the book is amazing (I've since read it after listening to this audiobook) However, don't waste your time with this audiobook.

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Mixed feelings

I read this some years ago and enjoyed it. I didn't like it as well as an audiobook this time round. The story seemed too strained and I didn't get the delight in playing with fictional characters. Could partly be the way it was abridged, partly the way it was read (ok on the whole I suppose but not inspiring and for goodness sake couldn't the narrator have got advice on how to pronounce Spanish and French names? His versions were often unrecognisable!). Or maybe my tastes have changed. I did listen to the end and it livened up my commute, but I doubt I'll listen again.

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Jumps.....

Really need to fix this audio book, tried but can't follow it cause it jumps, sad really as I look forward to hearing it.
Would review again if fixed.

2 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Abridged, loud music drowns dialogue

Wonderful narrator, slight and rather difficult-to-follow plot but that might be due to the editing, abridging, etc; short musical interludes that sometimes drown out the narrator.

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  • James Morehouse
  • 23-10-17

Needs to be fixed.

Although a great book, well written, exciting, and superbly narrated the download itself is the problem. The book jumped around and some parts repeated multiple times. it added confusion to the listener and was quite annoying. Please fix or refund.

20 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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  • Jay
  • 24-04-18

Out-of-Order!!

The audio is assembled Out-of-Order but the story is good and it is performed brilliantly. Very disappointing.

10 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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  • Jim N
  • 15-08-12

Worth the Credit

I rarely listen to abridged books because I loathe the very idea of slicing books up to make them shorter or more palatable. However, I was bored, I needed entertainment and I thought The Club Dumas would be just right for my mood so I downloaded this abridged audiobook version of the novel. Despite being in the mood for the book, I still might have balked at an abridged version but David Warner was the reader and that sealed the deal for me.

Overall, I loved the book! I won't get into the plot (it can be read elsewhere) but the writing was excellent, the story compelling and the ending very satisfying. Warner's performance didn't disappoint but there were moments where I could clearly feel that something well worth reading had been deleted. Consequently, I'm docking what I think would probably have been a 5 star read one star because it was abridged. I plan to pick up the novel and read it so I can see what I missed but even based on the abridged version, I can highly recommend The Club Dumas. It's a book for book lovers.

9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars
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  • Mike in IN
  • 11-06-19

My Blasphemous Review

I say blasphemous because I'm about to utter words that will offend every self-respecting reader: The move was better. How many people do you think would have read "To Kill a Mockingbird" if not for the movie? The same here. I worked backward from the movie and Polanski did this book a favor by dropping most of it's rambling on the cutting room floor making it into a screenplay. He managed to extract just the key worthwhile elements and weave them into a concise story that is mesmerizing to the viewer. This book rambles as if the published said "here's the number of pages you need to fill regardless of whether there's enough story to cover them". Excellent narration--still 4 our of 5, but w/o the narrator a solid 3 for being the scrapbook source material of a good movie.

4 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Adam
  • 16-10-18

Jumps around in story sequence

Just read the book unless you want to spend 6 hours irritated about the production. Narrator is fantastic though.

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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  • K. Grow
  • 12-10-10

what a joy

What a great story. It was fun from the start to the end. David Warner was a great narrator. I hope he reads more books for audible.

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars
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  • ray
  • 16-01-22

Returned

Chapters out of order or incomplete. Could be a great auidobook but needs to be fixed

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Gerardo Z.
  • 20-09-18

Skipped and mixed parts

The story and performance are wonderful. However, in the recording there are skipped parts that jump forward and back.

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars
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  • particular
  • 29-10-13

Not the Movie

What would have made The Club Dumas better?

This is rare, the book was not as good as the movie.

What was most disappointing about Arturo Perez-Reverte’s story?

The story's ending was disappointing

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

I like the idea of a book having a duel purpose. I found the premise of a club using such elaborate measure to select members a bit far fetched.

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for IdWell
  • IdWell
  • 30-04-18

odd error at very end of audio book

Any additional comments?

The audiobook failed to complete one sentence at the very end of the book: "I know now..."
It was supposed to finish the sentence like in printed book. I won't spoil book here.

2 people found this helpful