Spider Dance - A Novel of Suspense Featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes

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 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.

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 . . .

IRENE ADLER

Operatic diva. Femme fatale. Adventuress.

And one of the world's most intriguing detectives.

Before Caleb Carr, Anne Perry, and Laurie R. King, Carole Nelson Douglas gave readers a delightful look into Victoriana with one of the most impressive detective characters: Irene Adler, the only woman ever to have outwitted Sherlock Holmes, in "A Scandal in Bohemia." A charismatic performer and the intellectual equal (some would say superior) the men she encounters, Irene Adler is as much at home with a spyglass and revolver as with haute couture and gala balls.

And her adventures are the stuff of legend. She has faced down sinister spies, thwarted plots against nations, spurned a monarch and lived to reap a sweet revenge...and now is on the hunt for one of the true monsters of all time-Jack the Ripper. It was she who led a most unlikely group of allies through the cellars and catacombs of 1889 Paris in the search and capture of the suspect at a horrific secret-cult ceremony held beneath the city. But disaster has scattered those allies and the Ripper has again escaped, this time from the custody of the Paris police. Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, and Watson, to reinvestigate the Whitechapel murders of the previous fall from an entirely new angle.

Irene fears the Ripper will soon carve a bloody trail elsewhere and is eager to hunt this terror down. But terror has struck a little too close to home, for her own nearest and dearest are mysteriously missing--her companion/biographer, Nell Huxleigh, abducted in Paris and her barrister husband, Godfrey Norton, vanished in the wilds of Bohemia.

What should Irene do first? Search for Nell, Godfrey, or the Ripper? Though Irene has many highly placed friends, the Baron de Rothschild, Sarah Bernhardt, and the Prince of Wales can only offer money and good will.

For the actual pursuit, Irene must rely on an unreliable cohort, the American prostitute named Pink, who has proven to be someone with her own agenda, and Bram Stoker, the theatrical manager who was later to pen Dracula. The trail will lead back to Bohemia and on to new and bloodier atrocities before pursuers and prey reunite at a remote castle in Transylvania, where lthe Ripper is cornered and fully unveiled at last . . . a truly astounding yet chillingly logical answer to what the world has never known before:

Who was Jack the Ripper?

This long-awaited volume finally brings to light several cases of the world's most famous consulting detective that were originally suppressed to avoid scandal and embarrassment to the Crown, public figures, or to Holmes himself. Now, the truth is finally revealed regarding Holmes's exploits involving the Titanic, his rematch with Irene Adler, the childhoods of both Holmes and Watson, and such figures as Ida Tarbell, P.G. Wodehouse, and James McNeil Whistler. The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes is a cornucopia of Sherlockiana that will delight fans young and no-so-young.