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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780765345950
ISBN number: 0765345951
Label: Forge Books
Manufacturer: Forge Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 512
Printing Date: August 30, 2005
Publishing house: Forge Books
Release Date: August 30, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 326201
Studio: Forge Books
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Product Description:
Opera singer. Adventuress. American abroad. Irene Adler is all of this...and is also the only woman to ever have outwitted the great man, Sherlock Holmes.
After numerous adventures Irene has finally come home, not out of loyalty to her native shores but because of a baffling puzzle, and the one thing that haunts her. Irene has no real memory of her childhood and has spent most of her life creating a persona to fit her passions. When Daredevil reporter Nelly Bly lures Irene to America by hinting that she knows of Irene's parentage, Irene takes the bait and in doing so, embarks upon a pursuit of the most notorious woman of the nineteenth century.
Before the intrigue-ridden quest is over, Irene will uncover murderous international political conspiracies, lost treasure, and finally . . . the full, shocking secret of her birth.
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Rated by buyers 
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This eighth book in the series begins where book seven left off - in New York City in the late summer of 1889. Irene and the faithfull Penelope are on a mission to discover just who Irene's mother really was. There are a lot of other familiar people in New York with them - Nelly Bly, Quentin Stanhope, and of course Sherlock Holmes. As these two intrepid women are trying to unearth some historical data that will aid in identifying Irene's mother, they stumble upon a dangerous plot that puts both their lives at risk. With the help of the other people mentioned above, they manage to solve the case and find a lost treasure to boot. These books are extremely well-written, and there is a nice mix of real-live people in them just to keep them interesting. I like Ms. Douglas' take on true hisorical happenings and real historical people.
Rated by buyers -
Again Ms. Douglas has entertained me with this period series of the Opera Diva Irene Adler and her ever present sidekick Nell. Although the only think tiring is the constant "primness and prudishness" of Nell. I think she could evolve a bit more as the novels have unfolded. Maybe if there is another in the series, she will become less introverted in her thinking.
Spider Dance takes up where Irene's quest in Femme Fatale began, searching for her roots. Sherlock Holmes, Nelly Bly and Of course Quentin Stanhope all plays pars in this on going mystery.
The characters remain true to their century and Ms. Douglas has done her research yet again on the authenticity brought to the early period of NYC.
Rated by buyers 
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When I very first picked up this Sherlock and Irene mystery I flipped to the back and realized the novel was over 450 pages. Unfortunately the last 50 to 75 pages were unneccessary. The mystery was already sustantially solved and I kept waiting for another surprise to occur, but it never did. On top of this, as a Sherlock Holmes reader, I like to be able to try to solve the mystery before the ending. In this book it was virtually impossible because the crimes are being commited by characters barely revealed during the story. It is as though the author provided a great cast of possibilities and then pull the impossible out of a hat.
The best part of the book was the intertwined cast of characters thrust into a historical setting. The plot circulated from one cast member to another, both past and present - each one telling a part of the story from their perspective.
Is it worth the read? Yes. Could the mystery have a better and shorter conclusion? Definitely.
Rated by buyers 
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Ms. Douglas as usual writes a readable well paced though a bit too long novel. Her character are well drawn and interesting.
Rated by buyers -
I've just discovered this Irene Adler/Holmes series and I've read 5 of the 8 books as of 2005, and can hardly wait to read more.
Carole Nelson Douglas translates the prose style of Arthur Conan Doyle's day into the modern era with as much elegance as found in the BBC productions of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett. I hear Jeremy Brett in every word of Holmes dialogue in these novels.
As the fans of a television show will detail events going on offstage during an episode, Douglas shows us details of Holmes' investigations that would not have seemed pertinent to Conan Doyle as he wrote -- but he might well have been thinking of them. Douglas twangs every Holmsian heartstring with her deft expansion of the Doyle tales.
There is one difference though. Douglas shows us a 21st Century woman in Irene Adler, a woman truly with A Soul of Steel, (as the novel Irene At Large will be retitled with its December 2005 release). This is a woman Doyle could never have written and his readers probably would not have accepted.
But to us, Adler's biography makes her attitude plausible. We can easily believe she bested Sherlock Holmes more than once.
Even if you've never read any Sherlock Holmes -- read the Irene Adler novels.
Spider Dance is very special though. It has come out at the same time that Laurie R. King's new Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel Locked Rooms has appeared.
The two novels both focus on an investigation into a dark childhood hidden behind trauma induced blocks. Both are written with precision insight into human psychology. There is much to learn from each of these novels alone, but read in tandem they can be incredibly illuminating.
Mary Russell is searching for the traumatic events of her childhood in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake, and Irene Adler is investigating her lost childhood memories also starting in California, but during the Gold Rush.
There all similarity ceases, but both novels are 5 star, top notch entries into the Holmes apocrypha.
Here is the list of titles to date for the Irene Adler/Holmes series:
Good Night, Mr. Holmes; The Adventuress; A Soul of Steel which will be a re-titling of Irene At Large due out in December 2005. Then comes Another Scandal in Bohemia; Chapel Noir and its direct sequel, Castle Rouge, then Femme Fatale and the direct sequel Spider Dance.
These are all thick books, about 400 pages each with reasonable size print -- lots of words for the money and all of them definitely worth the price.
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