RavePaste MagazineReiss convincingly argues the obvious—that the story of General Alex Dumas is the story underlying his son’s better-remembered lifetime of work. The General proved a key inspiration for D’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers and the betrayed but resilient Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo ... Reiss reconstructed the general’s life through persistent historical detective work—including, he says, a bit of after-hours safecracking in search of old letters, this done with the tacit assistance of a sympathetic French functionary ... We find much black history, in particular, forgotten this way—hidden in plain sight. Thankfully, more and more historians like Reiss in recent decades have begun to dig down into that obscurity ... this story of The Black Count stands out. Through persistent, skillful efforts as a historian and sleuth, Reiss has produced a gripping account of General Alex Dumas.