Re: RARA-AVIS: Additions to the library - and what are you
reading?
RMINOT@aol.com
Tue, 1 Sep 1998 09:31:37 EDT
Just a quick note to endorse The Club Dumas by Arturo
Perez-Reverte, which I
haven't finished yet but is so good and so hardboiled I wanted
to propose it
as a possible candidate for the non-American month (Dec.?) of
the reading
list. The stupid cover blurb describes it as a cross between
Umberto Eco and
Anne Rice, but whoever said that from the NY Daily News didn't
read the book.
The hero/antihero Corso is a rare-book finder for hire and will
do anything
and everything to get what his clients want as long as the job
jibes with what
he wants, too. Allow me to share a passage, and you
decide:
"There was steel in her blue eyes, steel so cold that it
chilled you. She ran
a blood-red fingernail over the folder with the Dumas
manuscript. Maybe she
was expecting Corso to say something, but he remained silent.
If she was
after something--and it was pretty obvious that she was--he'd
let her do all
the work....
'May I sit down?'
The slightly husky voice. The echo of a heavy night, thought
Corso again.
He stood in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets,
waiting. Liana
Taillefer took off her hat and raincoat. She looked around with
her
interminable slowness and chose an old sofa. She went over to
it and sat down
slowly, her skirt riding high up. She crossed her legs with an
effect that
anyone, even Corso with half a gin less in him, would have
found devastating.
'I've come on business.'"
Have a nice day, Reeves Minot
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