Product Description

A new series that's all for one, murder for all.

Alexandre Dumas's Four Musketeers-the noble Athos, the cunning Aramis, the loyal Porthos, and sharp-witted D'Artagnan-now add murder and mystery to their ranks as swashbuckling sleuths in the court of King Louis XIII.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #138396 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Dumas fans eager for further details of the lives of his swashbuckling musketeer heroes may enjoy this first in a series of historical mystery novels that transforms those men of action and intrigue into the king's detectives. The concept is less far-fetched than it might seem; in one of Dumas's own sequels to The Three Musketeers, The Viscount of Bragelonne, D'Artagnan displays almost Holmesian powers of deduction. But D'Almeida has not yet realized the potential of her conceit. By choosing to wedge her plot into the midst of the well-known original—chronicling D'Artagnan's first adventure with Athos, Porthos and Aramis—she has constricted herself, making the central elements of her plot disappointingly familiar. The whodunit posed for her four heroes—a young woman who closely resembles the queen has been murdered by an unknown assailant—is not especially tricky due to a paucity of plausible suspects, and the colloquial language can jar. Nonetheless, the idea is interesting enough that both musketeer and mystery fans can hope for improvements in future entries. (Nov.)
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Customer Reviews

Tour of Seventeeth Century Paris
I was impressed with how authentic the seventeenth century mindset of the characters seemed. And four very different personalities, at that. From the brooding Athos, the womanizing Aramis, tongue tied Porthos, and the young but clever D'Artagnan we see four views of the world. And what a world! The descriptions of Paris and the people of Paris are delightful. The writer pulls the reader so far into the world that one feels that one could easily get lost if one made a wrong turn down a street.

This is not the real seventeenth century, but rather Dumas' Seventeenth, full of the coincidences, resemblances, class prejudice, chivalry, and casual bloodshed in the name of honor that decorated his literary world. A fun read, with a good mixture of characters and action.

Fun, swashbuckling tale!
LOVED it! A fun, swashbuckling adventure for modern readers. Ms D'Almeida does a fantastic job in this (the first of a series of adventures) tale. The fights are pure classics! With the twist of INTELLIGENT musketeers (something Dumas failed to do!), musketeers out to solve a murder! Great story! I can see why it was selected to be offered as a Mystery Book Club edition. Many kudos to the authoress for an excellent book. I look forward to the sequels!

fun swashbuckling historical mystery
In 1625 in a Paris tavern, Athos duels with a child D'Artagnan while the other two Musketeers, Portos and Aramis watch when their rivals, five of the Cardinal's Guards arrive. Their leader Jussac wants to arrest the Three Musketeers for breaking the Cardinal's ban on public dueling, but having faced humiliation earlier, the trio agrees to die here. They tell D'Artagnan to leave, but he refuses claiming in his heart he is the fourth musketeer.

They defeat their opponents and go off to celebrate only to see another musketeer who runs from them. They give chase, but when they catch up to him in an alley, they find him dead. However, when they look closer at the corpse, they realize the murdered victim is a she who looks extremely like Anne, the Queen of France. They debate what to do because if the deceased was killed because she is the Queen's double, then they need to uncover who committed treason; if she died because she was in a bad place, then the gendarme should handle the case. Deciding one for all and all for one and agreeing D'Artagnan earned his musketeer status, they begin to investigate who killed the queen's double?

This is a fun swashbuckling historical mystery starring the four musketeers of Dumas fame. The story line is filled with action as the heroes investigate the homicide while adhering to their original personalities. Though the number of suspects remains a bit low, musketeers and seventeenth century whodunit fans will enjoy this changing of the guard from thriller to mystery while retaining the heroic got your back essence of one for all and all for one brotherhood.

Harriet Klausner