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.)
