2003 historical mystery, seventh of Douglas's novels about Irene
Adler. Goaded by the scandal-mongering reporter Nellie Bly, Irene
travels back to New York to look into a past of which she has little
memory… but someone seems to be killing people who figured in it.
This book is back on form. When Douglas restarted this series
after a seven-year gap, she seems to have tried to vary the format, by
having Irene's Watson-figure and chronicler, Nell Huxleigh, first
excluded from Irene's investigations and then separated from her. Now
they are working together again, and the result is a restored levity
of tone that prevents the grim subject matter from becoming
overpowering.
The major theme here is vaudeville in New York in the 1860s, which is
already strange enough that each new oddity doesn't produce the usual
feeling of "oh, that must be the author showing off a bit of
research", which sometimes spoiled the earlier books.
Ongoing plots go on pleasingly, rather than being resolved, but of
course Sherlock Holmes also travels to New York – and, rather oddly,
is given the main role in the unmasking of the villain, having
constructed his solution out of the narrative eye. Holmes does play a
useful role in the story as well as in the detection, but I think this
is just a little overdone.
As an American writer, Douglas must have felt some temptation to put
Irene in America earlier: but her reluctance to go there still comes
over as convincing, and even though the final volume in the series is
also set on that side of the Atlantic I'm looking forward to it.
This is a thickish book but a light and quick experience, and for me
it's definitely a return to the quality of the earlier entries.
Followed by Spider Dance.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.