Infinity Beach by Jack McDevitt

Fourteen people attended this meeting, and one person contributed comments by e-mail. The topic of this meeting, Infinity Beach by Jack McDevitt, is a science fiction mystery set hundreds of years in our future. Despite centuries of space travel and the colonization of many solar systems, humans have still not encountered other intelligent life. Kim Brandywine, a fundraiser working on a last-ditch project to find extraterrestrials, discovers that her long-lost older sister was involved in an exploratory mission that may have actually made first contact. The plot details her search for what really happened. Eight people at the meeting had finished the book, and three were about halfway finished.

Since this was our group’s fifth discussion of a Jack McDevitt book (most of any author), we had a good idea of what to expect from Infinity Beach. It was a fun mystery with interesting SF elements. We enjoyed following all the twists of

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The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Réverte

This book and discussion were a bit unusual for us. The Club Dumas was originally written in Spanish, and it was published as a mainstream novel. The plot involves a rare book scout named Lucas Corso who is looking for several manuscripts by Alexandre Dumas and one supposedly authored by the devil. The Club Dumas had recently been filmed as The Ninth Gate, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Johnny Depp and Frank Langella. We kicked off our coverage of this book with a DVD viewing party Lori and I held at our house on the Sunday before the meeting. Ten people and two dogs showed up to watch the film, and we faithfully agreed not to talk about the book or movie until the regular meeting on Tuesday. We had dinner after the movie at Don Pablo’s.

When we held the book discussion at Adventures in Crime & Space, fourteen people showed up. Ten people at the meeting had finished the book, and twelve had seen the movie. Only one person had read other books by the author.

We liked a lot about this literary mystery. The details of rare book dealing were fascinating. We learned a lot about Dumas and his work. We appreciated how

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