Born in Cartagena, Spain, in 1951, Arturo Pérez-Reverte inherited from his merchant-mariner father a love of travel and from his grandfather a library of some 5000 books. He has said of his childhood, "Between the ages of nine and fifteen I read everything one can read . . . Joseph Conrad, Stendahl, Defoe. I remember I was very fond of Robinson Crusoe. But now I find him a particularly disgusting figure. When he eventually finds another human being, all he does is make a servant of him." Once kicked out of school for hitting a priest (it was a matter of honor), Pérez-Reverte has since had a colorful and successful career. Working on oil tankers during the 1970s, he began writing for a Spanish newspaper, and in 1977 went on to become a television journalist. He has reported from Bosnia and many other war zones for Spanish state television. Two of his seven books have been made into films, and Roman Polanski plans to film The Ninth Gate, a movie based onThe Club Dumas and starring Johnny Depp in the role of Corso. The Flanders Panel was ranked among the best crime novels of 1994 by The New York Times Book Review, and was awarded France's Grand Prize for Detective Literature.

Books by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

The Club Dumas

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte