Tremendous fun, and one can think of him as the thriller writer of his day.

His characters are largely compelling, and occasionally quite complex, but his dialogue is tends to be stilted, and while his sense of narrative is very strong, he sometimes drifts off into bizarre flights of philosophical maundering.

I'm surprised there's only one comment for him so far. "The Count of Monte Cristo" is a little long, but a classic that's almost always intriguing, and it seldom lags IMO. "The 3 Musketeers" never interested me that much, but "The Man In The Iron Mask," though similar in many respects to "The Count" was decent. One of the greatest French writers, and one of the better world writers from the middle of the 19th century, he was the son of a French nobleman and an African slave from the West Indies.

"The Count..." is the perfect novel, sex ,revenge, money..