This note contains spoilers for the book.

This is actually the book whose title drew my attention to this author in the first placed. I'm fairly early in the read so far; it looks like I may like it a bit better than The Flanders Panel. This one centers in the old book trade, always of interest.

There's a lot of historical information about Dumas, and about the D'artagnan romances, which is cool. The world is rather more modern than in The Flanders Panel, in that people sometimes have answering machines and computers (though he gets into a silly problem with the computer, having a DOS system boot up with a time-sharing style banner showing last login). There are interesting minor characters (especially the book restorers / forgers), the main character and some of the nearby characters are fairly interesting.

But as a mystery it's not very successful. Too much coincidence, in particular. The association of the two major plot threads simply can't be explained that way, sorry. And the 19-year-old girl, calling herself Irene Adler, with a 2 month old passport that gives her address 223B Baker Street, and who's a good fighter, and who comes out of nowhere, shepherds the main character through the mess, and gets involved with him, can't be left completely mysterious. Sorry, it's cheating, not allowed.

It is, however, better than The Flanders Panel, even with these flaws. It was enjoyable to read, though also annoying.