The author might have chosen to pen a cozy tale using Dumas’ characters and gotten away with it pleasingly enough, but fortunately she has done a lot more than that. She has managed to tell the tale in the same style as Dumas (updated for modern readers where it counts), and her only real alteration is in making the three musketeers rather smarter than they were in the originals. This makes sense, considering that they have fewer than 300 pages to solve a crime. The murder naturally is the sort pertaining to treason, and dark doings at high levels involving Cardinal Richelieu; anything else would have been very much out of place. The characters are all spot on, and the evocation of early seventeenth century France is just as Dumas had it. A round of applause too, for writing a book set in a period not already overdone and in packing a teasing plot, well-loved characters that spring to life and plenty of authentic background into a book of just the right length. Waiting until the next book is going to be hard... highly enjoyable!