Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 554
Printing Date: November 24, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 1243974
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Irene Adler is the only woman ever to have outwitted Sherlock Holmes... and the one who has come closest to stealing his heart.
She has competed (and sometimes cooperated) with the famous fictional detective over six popular and acclaimed novels, featuring her daring investigations across the Continent. All along, the beautiful and brilliant American diva-turned-detective has managed to conceal her background and history, even from her dashing barrister husband, Godfrey Norton, and her devoted companion and biographer, English spinster Nell Huxleigh.
But she has had some help along the way to do this, from such unlikely sources as the Baron de Rothschild, Sarah Bernhardt, and Bram Stoker, as well as the soon-to-be-infamous Nellie Bly, a daring American journalist who helped Irene hunt Jack the Ripper. Now Nellie has wired Irene some astounding news, news that will shake her world: Irene's mother is the target of an assassin.
Irene’s past is shrouded in secrecy, and at very first she is unwilling to divulge anything that would link her to America. But a series of bizarre killings in New York City draws her reluctantly back to her native country, where she must race with a murderer to find her mother, a woman of mystery who may turn out to be the most notorious woman of the nineteenth century.
As Irene forges a trail into her own hidden past, Nellie Bly draws another ace investigator across the Atlantic to join in the hunt for a serial killer, the last man on earth Irene Adler wants to discover anything about her shocking past... Sherlock Holmes.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
This is the 7th book in the Irene Adler series about the only woman to outwit Sherlock Holmes.
Following their adventures chasing Jack the Ripper, Irene Adler and her companion Nell Huxley need a break. So when Pink, also known as Nellie Bly (yes, that Nellie Bly), cables that someone is trying to kill Irene's mother, they seize upon the chance for a vacation in America and incidentally to set Pink straight about meddling in Irene's personal life. Unknown to Irene and Nell, Pink also lures Sherlock Holmes to the case.
It's not quite as alarming for Irene as one might think: as far as Irene knows, she's an orphan. But she remembers very little of her childhood, so she is intrigued. And there has been a murder, a very dramatic one: a medium killed during a seance, strangled by the gauze she used as a special effect.
As it turns out, Irene grew up in vaudeville, a child performer mostly looked after by the other performers, and a mysterious woman in grey who came around periodically to check on the children. Irene revisits her past and searches for clues to the killer at the same time, interviewing various performers she vaguely remembers from her childhood.
The mystery is intriguing, with plenty of twists, and it's especially interesting to watch Irene, Pink, and Sherlock Holmes all investigate the same case from different angles.
It was fascinating to read about the vaudeville performers' lives and their varied acts, as well as the broader picture of New York during that time. The secondary characters are all very realistic and as varied as they would be in real life--despite their smallish roles in the story, they each have good and bad points.
This was a more intimate and emotional case--certainly for Irene, whose past figured strongly in the story, but also for Nell, whose strict moral code is tested by all the shades of gray.
Rated by buyers 
-
The setting is New York City in the late summer of 1889. Irene has gone there to explore her past that she seems to have forgotten most of. While the two women are there they discover a number of deaths which turn out to be murders of former acquaintances of Irene. As a very young girl she was in a vaudeville theatre group. Why are these people dying? Irene thinks it has something to do with her. Penelope and Irene set out to uncover the past, and to determine who is murdering these old friends. At the same time, Sherlock Holmes is over in New York doing the same thing and Irene and Holmes are set to cross paths and clash again. Ms. Douglas' rich historical detail and her characters held me in thrall yet again. It was also fun to find out some past details about the infamous and beautiful Irene Adler. These books are sumptuous feasts to historical fiction lovers.
Rated by buyers 
-
I had heard about this series and found this book on sale. Being a fan of historical mystery series, I broke my own rule. I read this book before reading any of the others in the series. There are constant references to past stories, leaving me wondering whether this book was simply a review of previous cases. I enjoyed the story once I got into the book but it was rough going at first. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it much more if I had read her earlier books beforehand.
Rated by buyers -
Femme Fatale is the very first book in a duology that ends with Spider Dancer.
In this volume the fictional detective Irene Adler Norton and her assistant Penelope Huxleigh travel to 1889 New York to solve a series of murders. the common thread is that each of the people knew Irene when she was a child in the theaters of New York. Can one of them hold the secret of who is Irene's parents? They must find the murderer to solve the mystery.
Told through the journals of Ms. Huxleigh and the notes of the real-life Nellie Bly and the fictional Sherlock Holmes, Douglas has found an intriguing way to relate a good story that mixes historical figures with fictional characters.
Rated by buyers 
-
Ms. Douglas is not the most skilled of writers, but has made up for it in the previous entries into this series with direction and period detail, which allowed the reader to be carried along. There was much redundancy of detail in this offering, sometimes almost verbatim descriptions just a few pages hence, making me wonder if either the editor was attempting to combine various drafts in a hurry, or different writers wrote sections and the parts were hastily assembled.
Find other books like this one:
