• The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco
• Purity of Blood by Arturo Perez-Reverte
• The Last Run by Greg Rucka

That means I’ve read the books already, and need to write up my reviews. Oddly, I have about the same reaction to all three books. I read each with very high expectations, and all three fell short of those, but barely. That’s a my critical way of saying these were pretty damn good, just not damn good enough.

Right now I’m reading Purity of Blood, the second in Arturo Perez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste books. It’s a book of pure entertainment, which probably means it hits all my buttons more so than it actually is a universally entertaining novel. It’s the kind of book my father would love. He’s old school, a real paperback cowboy who loves direct, well plotted books. Adventure books. Westerns. Thrillers. Naval fiction. He’s big into mysteries, especially detective stories. He doesn’t read much speculative fiction, but has a crazy knowledge of authors and lots of hours beating feet in the used book store.

And, something just struck me about all those books — the books my father loves, and the ones I enjoy as refreshing breather among more complicated or literary works. So much of those old tropes are guy stuff. I’m talking about the private detectives, the heroic naval scoundrels, the spies, the pirates, the superheroes, the vikings, barbarians, thieves, space farers, and on and on. We’re attracted to them because they’re powerful. Westerns aren’t popular because they happen to be part of American history. The Shakers are part of American history, but they’re not getting their own genre shelf at the book store. Westerns are popular because the edge the line of violence and power in America (and beyond, sometimes).

We read these kinds of tough guy things because their romantic, powerful figures. They pull more interest because they’re easily plotted, active and victorious ideals. We go in knowing this is exciting stuff. These tropes become assumptions, short hand for escape and suspension of disbelief. We just know Vikings are rough around the edges and mock those silly, girly Christian men. We just know spies just get into sexual tension. It’s not just part of the job, it’s part of the genre. And, to a genre, these things are populated foremost by narratively compelling, powerful guys.

Then sometimes a funny thing happens. Someone comes along and subverts those assumptions. It’s a sexually powerful spy, but she’s a woman. The gunsligner is a wronged woman.

And, still other times something comes along and tempts that allure and power in a new way. I can’t really unpack the subgenre of Steampunk, but it’s a fascinating case where things once silly and genteel and colonial get a grunged out glint, a hint of sex, and a lot of power and excitement. By jove, a new bookshelf category arrives.

All of which isn’t me saying much insightful. I’m certainly not critiquing those genre twists and turns. It helps me recognize why I’m drawn to the spectacular Captain Alatriste and not at all to, oh, Miss Marple.

The Club Dumas is a mystery thriller with shades of the noir detective. In this case, protagonist Lucas Corso is a book detective. He’s a mercenary hired by rich — and usually corrupt — book collectors to buy, sell, trade and find rare books. I found Corso fascinating. (My wife, who read the book with me, found him deplorable. Ce la guerre!) He’s a weasel of a man, exceptionally clever, and lonely. He occupies his time drinking gin and romanticizing his Napoleonic ancestor. Oh yes, and books — very expensive, very rare books.

The story begins with a book collector’s suspicious suicide. Corso gets hired to verify the dead man’s possession – a rare manuscript written by Alexandre Dumas. It’s a chapter from The Three Musketeers. Subsequently, he’s hired by an obsessive collector of the occult to discover which of three extant editions of The Book of Nine Doors is a forgery.

Thus begins a twin strand of narrative where Corso races to find eccentric book collectors and examine their occult tomes while he’s pursued by a modern-day Milady and Rochefort (Dumas’ famous villains) as a strange conspiracy re-enacts The Three Musketeers with him at the center. The eccentrics wind up dead, and Corso demonstrates his cleverness.

Along the way he finds the girl. The alluring woman gives Corso fictional names and careless excuses. She’s slightly infuriating to read. Corso asks her questions I wanted to know, and she’s just aloof. There are many hints that she’s supernatural – a guardian angel maybe, or even the Devil. Through her shining, green-eyed seduction we learn that Corso once loved and lost. It explains his emptiness and callousness. And, in the end, explains why the green-eyed girl is so fond of him. She is, it turns out, rather diabolical.

Throughout the book, Corso works to unravel the pictorial mystery within The Book of Nine Doors. The book contains nine engravings, and the novel actually shows the images. This teases out one of the most captivating mysteries of the book. I desperately wanted Corso to unravel this occult puzzle. And, he does. But, the result is disappointing.

Pérez-Reverte gives us a lesson in narrative; I’m still not sure I needed it. At times, the characters actually imagine that their absurd situations are so dreadful that perhaps they’re merely fictional characters in a book. Of course, they are. The author’s teasing. This itself, I don’t mind. He’s not the first to dabble in post-modernism. But, Pérez-Reverte has another, grander trick up his sleeve. To spoil it for readers, his trick is a lesson in how we perceive narrative. Those twin strands of narrative are ruses. They’re not intertwined. Corso – and therefore readers like me – have impressed upon these twin strands interconnectivity.

And what is the result? Corso, for all his cleverness, learns that he’s lost his soul long ago. He’s Faustian. And, in the end, he knows it. He’s smitten with the girl, and she’s pulling the strings behind it all, wrecking selfish interests for her own amusement. Let’s just say the devil’s in the details.

Like I said, I’m not sure I needed the lesson in constructing narrative. Fortunately, I the lesson entertained the hell out of me. It had all the wonderful trappings of that Umberto Eco style occult mystery (Eco himself actually has a cameo in the story!) in a tidy detective fiction package. It’s a good read with some frayed ends.

The Club Dumas: B-