The Club Dumas

A prologue presents a crime scene: An examining magistrate investigates the apparent suicide of an unnamed man found hanged from a light fixture, his hands bound with a tie and an open Dumas novel on the floor beneath him.

Boris Balkan, a literary critic specializing in the 19th-century popular novel, introduces himself as narrator and describes meeting Lucas Corso, a mercenary book hunter. Corso brings Balkan a manuscript: 15 handwritten pages in French titled "Le Vin d'Anjou" ("The Anjou Wine"), corresponding to chapter 42 of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers. Balkan identifies the handwriting as consistent with Dumas's but declines to certify its authenticity, recommending that Corso visit Achille Replinger, a Paris-based expert in autographs. Corso reveals the manuscript was purchased from Enrique Taillefer, a publisher found hanged a week earlier, the same man from the prologue.

At a Madrid bar, Corso tells his friend Flavio La Ponte, a bookseller who now owns the manuscript, about his plan to authenticate "The Anjou Wine" in Paris. He also has a separate job from Varo Borja, Spain's leading book dealer, involving The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows. This book was printed in Venice in 1666 by Aristide Torchia, who reproduced nine engravings allegedly from the Delomelanicon, a legendary manual for summoning the devil. The Inquisition, the Catholic Church's tribunal for prosecuting heresy, burned all copies and executed Torchia, who confessed that one copy survived. Three copies now exist: in Sintra, Portugal; in Paris; and in Borja's possession. Corso must compare them to verify Borja's copy. At the bar, he notices a tall, dark man with a mustache and a scar, stirring a nagging sense of familiarity.

Corso visits Liana Taillefer, the publisher's widow, who confirms she knew about the manuscript but claims her husband never planned to sell it. Outside, Corso notices a chauffeur with the same scarred face beside a Jaguar. In Toledo, Borja, whose private collection is devoted to books about the devil, presents his copy of The Nine Doors, bound in black leather with a golden pentacle, and instructs Corso to compare it with the other two, acquiring the authentic one "by whatever means." As Corso leaves, a car nearly runs him down; the driver is the scarred man.

At home, Corso catalogues the book's nine woodcut engravings and notes its imprimatur, an official approval notice reading Cum superiorum privilegio veniaque ("By authority and permission of the superiors"). He realizes this notice could not refer to the Church, which banned the book. While studying the Dumas manuscript, he identifies the scarred man as a living double of Rochefort, Cardinal Richelieu's sinister agent in The Three Musketeers.

After a second visit to Balkan, Corso returns home to find his apartment broken into, a Montecristo cigar butt left as a mocking signature. Expert bookbinders Pedro and Pablo Ceniza examine The Nine Doors and discover that while seven engravings list Torchia as both engraver and designer, two list only the initials L.F., meaning someone else created those original drawings. Liana Taillefer arrives demanding the manuscript; when Corso refuses, she attacks him with a broken bottle, and he subdues her. She threatens: "They'll kill you for this, Corso."

On the train to Lisbon, Corso encounters a green-eyed young woman from Balkan's café who gives her name as Irene Adler, a name Corso recognizes from the Sherlock Holmes stories. In Sintra, he visits Victor Fargas, an impoverished aristocrat whose decaying estate, the Quinta da Soledade, holds over 800 rare books on its bare floors. Comparing the two copies of The Nine Doors, Corso discovers five engravings differ: a key held in opposite hands, a labyrinth with and without an exit, an hourglass reversed, a chessboard in white versus black, and an executioner with and without a halo. Each difference corresponds with a shift in the designer's initials from A.T. to L.F. Corso realizes Torchia told the truth that one book survived but concealed it across three copies, distributing authentic and altered engravings among them.

The next morning, the girl wakes Corso with the news that Fargas is dead. At the estate, The Nine Doors is missing; in the fireplace lie charred remains of the book with its engravings removed before burning. Fargas's body floats facedown in the garden pond. The girl insists they leave for Paris immediately.

In Paris, Corso authenticates the Dumas manuscript with Replinger and visits Baroness Frieda Ungern, an elderly authority on demonology who owns the third copy. She deciphers the engravings' symbolic meanings and reveals that a previous owner complained the book's formula never "falls into the correct sequence." Corso finds three more differing engravings in this copy, each signed L.F. Eight correct engravings are distributed across all three books, while engraving nine is identical in every copy with no L.F. signature.

That evening, Rochefort ambushes Corso along the Seine and tries to steal his bag. The girl appears and drives Rochefort off with a devastating kick. She and Corso spend the night together. The next morning, he discovers La Ponte and Liana Taillefer at the Hotel Crillon. He confronts them, but Liana lets Rochefort in while Corso argues with La Ponte, and Rochefort knocks Corso unconscious. They flee with his bag containing The Nine Doors and the Dumas manuscript, leaving a note mimicking Richelieu's carte blanche from the novel.

At the Ungern Foundation, fire engines surround the building; the baroness is dead. Connecting the thieves' carte blanche to the opening line of The Three Musketeers, the girl deduces the meeting will take place in Meung-sur-Loire on the first Monday in April. They drive through a storm to the town and confront Liana at her hotel. Rochefort escorts Corso at gunpoint through the cellars of the Château de Meung, but Corso pushes him down a spiral staircase, takes the Dumas manuscript, and enters a candlelit library where Boris Balkan waits.

Balkan reveals himself as the story's true narrator and the mastermind behind the Dumas plot. He discovered the complete original manuscript of The Three Musketeers and founded the Club Dumas, a secret society of 67 members who each hold one chapter. Taillefer broke the rules by threatening to publicize "The Anjou Wine"; Balkan exposed Taillefer's own novel as plagiarism, and Taillefer hanged himself. Liana is Balkan's lover; Rochefort is really Laszlo Nicolavic, a character actor. Balkan insists the murders of Fargas and Ungern are unrelated to his club and that Corso's "excessive intertextual reading" caused him to conflate two separate plots.

Corso drives to Toledo with the girl and finds Borja in a candlelit room, performing a ritual with engravings from all three copies arranged inside a chalk circle on the floor. Borja was the true killer: He used Corso to confirm the theory, then murdered Fargas and Ungern to collect the engravings while framing Corso. Absorbed in summoning the devil, Borja ignores Corso's demands for payment. Corso burns one engraving and beats Borja, but the dealer crawls back into the circle each time.

Corso steps into the morning sunlight and realizes that engraving nine, identical in all copies with no L.F. signature, was a forgery, almost certainly made by the Ceniza brothers for the love of their craft. Borja's ritual is fatally incomplete. As Corso walks toward the girl, he notices he casts no shadow. From deep within the house, a piercing, inhuman scream rings out. The girl smiles from the car, all the morning light in her green eyes, and Corso goes to meet her, thinking that everyone gets the devil he deserves.