Customer Reviews

Deadlier than the Pen: A Diana Spaulding Mystery (Diana Spaulding Mystery series)

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Deadlier Than The Pen is a truly riveting mystery is set in the crime ridden world of 1888 New York City where more than a dozen newspapers are locked in a sometimes violent competition for their share of the reading public and someone has murdered two journalists. Diana Spaulding is a newspaper reporter assigned by her editor to find out just who or what is behind these killings. Could it be handsome Damon Bathory who has made his name as an author of horror fantasy fiction? Kathy Lynn Emerson is an accomplished author and Deadlier Than The Pen is her most imaginative mystery yet!

I'm always excited when I see a new mystery series set in the eighteenth or nineteenth century and featuring a female protagonist. Certainly, this novel meets those criteria. It did feature murder and mayhem, but they seemed not to be the focus of the plot. Rather, they functioned as a series of obstructions which delayed the novel's romantic resolution. The romatic coupling definitely seemed to be the point of the outcome, rather than the solving of the crime.

That is not to say that the novel does not feature adventure, plot twists, etc. It also features stock characters, gothic allusions, etc., all of which reminded me of the sensational novels of the nineteenth century (see George Thompson, Lippard, etc.). But whereas the suspense in those novels builds--because they really will kill off characters, good or bad--here, the happy ending seems inevitable. I hope the series--and the characters--will develop as the character evolves.

In a new series by Kathy Lynn Emerson we enter the world of New York's Newspaper Row. Protagonist Diana Spaulding is a widow who must support herself. There are not many opportunities open to women in 1888. Diana is given a job to write for the Independent Intelligence by a brother of a friend. Her hopes are to be a serious journalist, but editor Horatio Foxe has the idea that scandal and gossip is the ticket to higher newspaper sales. Her new assignment is to dig up dirt on horror author Damon Bathory. Two female journalists have murdered and Bathory seems like a plausible suspect. As Diana launches her investigation into Bathory's life, she is inexplicably drawn to the man which is a problem if he is a possible murderer.

Kathy Lynn Emerson has created two extremely likable characters with a lot of chemistry together. The set up of the characters and story were very compelling. The early part of the story was a real page-turner. The book started to drag a bit in the middle especially with the introduction of the theater troupe characters. There was a bit too much going on that extraneous to the story. This was a very promising debut of a new series that looks to be as good as the DOWN UNDER series.

Diana Spaulding, a scandal sheet writer of a theater review and gossip column called "Today's Tidbits," is forced by her editor to use the sleazy tricks of New York's yellow journalists to investigate the handsome horror author and actor Damon Bathory. Mesmerized by the mysterious actor, Diana is in danger of not only losing her heart but her life. Three women, all theater critics like Diana, have been murdered in cities where both Bathory and her ex-actor husband's troupe had performed. Now suspicious accidents are happening to Diana as well.

Widowed after an unfortunate choice in her first husband, Diana is lucky to get her job since newspapers had limited quotas for female journalists. Diana feels constrained, but "men were sent after news stories; women wrote society gossip of household hints columns, or risked their necks as `stunt girls' like the World's Nellie Bly." (The real Nellie Bly, Diana's role model and peer, is known for faking insanity in order to produce her undercover exposé of mental institutions. She also is well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world). The eccentric writer of depraved horror tales, Mrs.Northcote, also faces the prejudice against women working in male dominated occupations. She has had to write under a male pseudonyn in order to get her work published.

The novel brings the 19th century world of a traveling acting troupe to life as well. Also there is Diana's newspaper's editorial room, a man's space complete with throat searing cigar smoke and a floor soiled with spittle from often missed cuspidors. The paralyzing East Coast blizzard of 1888, which finds Diana stuck on a smoke belching long distance train, also is featured. The story, however, is as much a romance as mystery, and doesn't quite reach the more engaging level of Emerson's Elizabethan England "Face Down" series, featuring herbalist Lady Appleton.