Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780765343475
ISBN number: 0765343479
Label: Forge Books
Manufacturer: Forge Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 512
Printing Date: September 16, 2002
Publishing house: Forge Books
Sale Popularity Level: 415207
Studio: Forge Books
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Product Description:
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...
Amazon.com Review:
In 1889, opera diva and amateur investigator Irene Adler (the only woman ever to outwit Sherlock Holmes in the original Conan Doyle stories) is called on to investigate the slaughter of several prostitutes in a Parisian brothel. The house is frequented by British royals and not entirely unknown to Adler's wealthy patron. Adler sees that the French murders bear a disturbing resemblance to the still unsolved English crimes perpetrated by Jack the Ripper. Along with her companion Nell Huxleigh, who plays Dr. Watson to Adler's Holmes, and a mysterious young woman named Pink, whose intimate knowledge of sexual peccadilloes in high and low places horrifies Nell, Adler follows an unknown killer's bloody trail from the Arc de Triomphe to the catacombs and sewers of late-19th-century Paris. This is a lively historical thriller as well as a smart and faithful extension of the Holmes canon. Irene Adler justly deserves the spotlight Carole Nelson Douglas shines on her in this, her fifth outing. -- Jane Adams
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Rated by buyers 
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"Chapel Noir" and "Castle Rouge" are two halves of one very, very long novel. You can't enjoy them separately, but that's no reason not to wade in with Irene Adler and Nell Huxleigh on another Victorian sleuthing and competition with the indomitable Sherlock Holmes.
This time, Carole Nelson Douglas offers a new analysis of the Jack the Ripper murders and examines old and new suspects for the role of "Saucy Jack" as her inquiry agent, Irene Adler, investigates Ripper-like crimes in Paris. For help, Irene enlists the real-life Bertie, Prince of Wales, Baron de Rothschild, Buffalo Bill Cody and Bram Stoker. She delves deeply into religious cult symbolism and mystery and discovers through Richard von Krafft-Ebing's "Psychopathia Sexualis" that the Ripper's slaughters are far from unique. As we could well tell her with such modern examples as Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy.
In addition to Penelope Huxleigh's exhaustive diaries are observations from a mysterious orange journal and from the journal of the irritating Pink, a supposed habitué of a Paris "maison de rendezvous." These lead us on a harrowing journey through Paris, London, Prague and Transylvania to the far-fetched, but possible, conclusion of this entertainingly dark novel.
As admirable as Irene Adler is, and the perfect foil for Sherlock Holmes, for me the best character in the series has been--and remains--the very human, Nell Huxleigh. This prim and proper parson's daughter has a taste for grue and gore that she continually denies, yet she won't be left out of the adventure despite her traditional upbringing. Nell's stretching and growing personality provides the dry and wry humour that permeates the series, and in this story she has ample opportunities to see herself in new lights.
This review is based on earlier hardback editions.
Rated by buyers 
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Come join Ms. Douglas on a wild ride in Paris in spring of 1889. It is the year of the unveiling of the Eiffel Tower as well as the scene of the 1889 World's Fair. And Irene and Nell are on the trail of a particularly vicious killer. Could it be that Jack the Ripper who terrorized London last fall has moved on to Paris? There are a number of particularly gruesome killings involving women in Paris that spring. So Irene and Nell who are joined by a young American protegy called Pink are trying to stop the slaughters. With the aid of Sherlock Holmes, an American trapper called Buffalo Bill Cody, an Indian tracker called Red Tomahawk as well as some French Gendarmes, it looks like they may be successful. But be prepared this book leaves the reader with a mighty big cliff-hanger, so that we feel that we have to rush right out and get the subsequent book in the series. Ms. Douglas' series is a winner. I am really enjoying the stories about Irene Adler.
Rated by buyers -
Irene Adler is the only female adversary to outwit Sherlock Holmes and she may have stolen his heart as well. Carol Nelson Douglas has taken the brief outline of Irene Adler in the Sherlock Holmes adventure A Scandal In Bohemia and fleshed it out into a marvelous sleuth of her own design. She has created her own series of books with Irene Adler as a 19th century detective with a feminist flair.
Adler's latest two-part adventure, Chapel Noir and Castle Rouge, is told through a series of journal entries by her female companion Penelope Huxleigh. Additional chapters are supposedly taken from notes written by a prostitute called Pink and sections of a mysterious orange book of anonymous authorship. This multiple "authorship" allows Douglas to present her story from different perspectives.
And what a story! In Chapel Noir Adler is called on by Baron de Alphonse Rothschild to investigate a particularly bloody murder in a Parisian bordello. Before long Jack the Ripper is the suspect and Sherlock Holmes (sans Watson) has come to Paris to investigate. As the plot moves on, more famous historical figures are drawn in either as suspects or allies. 470 pages later I found, instead of the end, that this is the very first of a two part story.
A rollicking adventure that continues for another 470 pages in Castle Rouge. Lots of fun if you can stand the gruesome aspects of the crimes.
Rated by buyers -
This book sat on my shelf for two years because I bought it by mistake. Well, the mistake was not reading it sooner! It's great! I am disappointed in my fellow readers who obviously haven't checked the FACTS of the book.
#1. The suspect in the story (read it yourself, Mac!) is a genuine Jack-the-Ripper suspect, and considered by many to actually BE the Ripper. He had murdered his wife and was an escapee (or more likely let go) from a madhouse.
#2. The Ripper murders have always been claimed to show some religious or occult symbol, authors vary on what. Me, the ol' Raven is like The Great Randi, skeptic unparalleled, who points out that any pattern is only possible if you connect the dots that way.
#3. Pink. Yes, that was her nickname, and her name as given in the book is her real one. But no one remembers her by that name, since she is world-famous under a pseudonym. I won't say what it was, but if I did all of you would slap your forehead and say "Oh, yeah! I've heard of her!" You probably think Mark Twain was his real name too.
As for the story ending midstream, do you really want an 800 page book? There's just too much to tell in one story. So read Castle Rouge. It'll pay. Quoth the Raven...
Rated by buyers 
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Awful stuff. Torpid and turgid with sad delusions of grandeur. A painful read. Plot development is slow and the author takes every opportunity to trumpet the ladies and denigrate the men. I could have swallowed that if the book had moved at a decent clip. Instead, we are subjected to the blatherings between Adler and Nell ad nauseaum. In one particular scene, the author takes over 3 pages of conversation and description as the two main protagonists pick up a few crumbs from the very first crime scene.
The topper was the "discusion questions" and interview with the author at the end of the book. These clearly displayed the author's self-infatuation and pretense of "deep ideas", with the questions focusing on women's roles in the 19th century and such tired old chestnuts as the duality of sexual mores concerning men and women's roles and habits (e.g. If Jack the Ripper had murdered a series of men, would anyone still be talking about him and what are the societal connotations of this apparent infatuation with men savaging women? Why was it acceptable for men to be promiscuous and women not to be?). It all smacks of freshmen-year pseudo-intellectual claptrap.
If you want a well-paced mystery novel, try Caleb Carr, Lindsey Davis, George Pelecanos, Bernard Cornwell, Simon Scarrow, Rosemary Rowe, Agatha Christie, Steven Saylour or David Wishart.
How bad is this book? How high is "up"? I'm kicking myself for buying the hardcover version. I plan to give it away as a gift to someone I don't really like.
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