Chapel Noir (Irene Adler Series #5) by Carole Nelson Douglas

From the Publisher

Before Caleb Carr and Laurie R. King, Carole Nelson Douglas gave readers a compelling look into Victoriana with a bold new detective character: Irene Adler, the only woman to ever outwit Sherlock Holmes. An operatic diva and the intellectual equal of most of the men she encounters, Irene is as much at home with disguises and a revolver as with high society and haute couture.
Chapel Noir is the fifth book in Carole Nelson Douglas's critically acclaimed Irene Adler series, which reinvents "the woman" that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced in "A Scandal in Bohemia" as the heroine of her own extravagant adventures.

This time readers are thrust into one of the darkest periods of criminal fact and fiction when two courtesans are found brutally slaughtered in the lavish boudoir of a Paris house. No woman should ever see such horrors, authorities declare, but a powerful sponsor has insisted that Irene investigate the case, along with her faithful companion, sheltered parson's daughter Penelope Huxleigh.

But does anyone really seek the truth, or do they wish only to bury it with the dead women--for there is a worse horror that will draw Irene and her archrival, Sherlock Holmes, into a duel of wits with a fiendish opponent. These Paris killings mimic a series of gruesome murders that terrorized London only months before, in a dangerous and disreputable part of town known as Whitechapel . . .

Library Journal

Victorian opera diva/sleuth Irene Adler (in Arthur Conan Doyle's classic A Scandal in Bohmia, she was also the only woman to best Sherlock Holmes) assists Paris police as they investigate the brutal murders of several young women in a local brothel. Horribly, the murders remind Irene of Jack the Ripper's "work." A vastly entertaining tale; for fans of Holmesian and Victorian mysteries. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

After a seven-year hiatus, fictional editor Fiona Witherspoon at last presents the return of sleuth extraordinaire Irene Adler (Irene's Last Waltz, 1994, etc.). This fifth adventure of Sherlock Holmes's brash female rival sends her deep into a noirish Paris underground as the new Eiffel Tower soars high during its debut in spring 1889 at l'Exposition Universelle. While the world above celebrates humanity's technological advances, a series of savage, Ripper-like mutilations await the women of Paris below. Always a step behind Irene and her prudish companion/amanuensis Nell Huxleigh, Holmes tracks the women through catacomb, sewer, and Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, revealing a knotty case of gender hatred and divided identity that, Irene claims, pushes him beyond his element. Always a step ahead, the reader is privy to the secret journal of the mastermind plotting a dastardly political use for a primitive killer. Meantime, the more appealing man in Adler's life, her barrister husband, Godfrey Norton, disappears in Transylvania, playing Jonathan Harker to the toothy "provincial satrap" he's seeking, and her sidekick Nell-proud as ever to be an ignorant Victorian female-falls prey to vampiric forces she little understands. The episode of Prince Albert at the Wild West Show probably isn't necessary to flavor this hearty stew. But somehow Irene's saga doesn't implode into a morass of historical data, Ripper lore, and exposition tours. Douglas cleverly balances tragedy and farce in a gentle mockery of period adventure and a ruthless depiction of all-too-contemporary hatreds.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents