The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte: Lucas Corso is a book detective – that is, he finds and authenticates various rare volumes for wealthy collectors. In this tale, he finds both an original manuscript of a chapter from The Three Musketeers, as well as The Nine Doors, a manual for summoning the devil that was supposedly burned some four hundred years ago. While verifying both texts, Corso comes across some unusual differences between the engravings of the three existing copies of The Nine Doors. People start dying, and Corso keeps running into characters from The Three Musketeers come to life, and the whole thing gets pretty weird. When I was about two thirds of the way through, I was describing the plot to my husband, who commented that it sounded quite a bit like The Ninth Gate. Sure enough, that film is based on the book, except all the Dumas bits are removed and the ending changed. I hated the ending to the movie. The book is better in that respect, but while I was completely rapt up until the last couple chapters, the Big Reveal left me a little cold. But hey, loving an entire book save two chapters is better than I can say about many others.
Also posted on BookCrossing.