The Man in the Iron Mask (Collins Classics)

Three decades after the events of The Three Musketeers, the four friends have drifted into separate lives and, eventually, onto opposing sides. Athos has retired to his estate, Porthos has married into wealth and a title, Aramis has risen through the church to become Bishop of Vannes, and D'Artagnan alone still serves the king, now as captain of the guard he once begged to join. Alexandre Dumas uses that separation to turn an adventure series into a study of loyalty, ageing and political calculation, with a conspiracy at the French court pulling the old comrades apart. The Collins Classics edition presents the novel as an affordable paperback for general readers and students. In brief: • Concludes the arc begun in The Three Musketeers and continued in Twenty Years After • Court intrigue and questions of legitimacy drive the plot • Characters written with far more moral complexity than in the earlier books • Part of the Collins Classics paperback series A good fit for classic adventure readers and literature students, available from Boipoka.