Spider Dance: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes (Irene Adler Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Carole Nelson Douglas (Author)

Book Description

Series: Irene Adler Mysteries | Publication Date: November 11, 2004

Irene Adler is the beautiful opera singer who bested the best detective in the world, the only woman to ever outwit Sherlock Holmes. She has spent years in self-imposed exile in Europe, in an attempt to reinvent herself and create a new life, because she cannot remember the old one. But now circumstances have forced this diva-turned-detective to investigate a past she doesn't remember--on her home ground.

Daredevil reporter Nelly Bly has lured Irene, her faithful chronicler and British parson's daughter Nell Huxleigh, and Holmes himself to America, offering information regarding Irene's parentage. New York City in 1889 proved to be both fascinating and perilous for Irene, and Nelly Bly's information was more harmful than helpful. Because now Irene and her allies--and enemies--must race to follow a deadly trail of hidden personal and political history back in time to the days of the California gold rush, thirty years earlier.

They are pursuing the complex and contradictory life story of one of the most notorious women of the nineteenth century, and before the intrigue-ridden quest is over, Irene and Nell will uncover murderous international political conspiracies, lost treasure, and finally... the full, shocking secret of Irene's birth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The game's afoot and dancing in Douglas's eighth historical thriller featuring the dynamic Irene Adler Norton, her able assistant Penelope "Nell" Huxleigh and that clever human bloodhound, Sherlock Holmes. At the end of their last adventure (2003's Femme Fatale), set in New York, Holmes suggested that "Mrs. Eliza Gilbert"—a name on a tombstone—may actually belong to Norton's mother. While an elderly cleric's brutal murder at William K. Vanderbilt's Fifth Avenue mansion occupies Holmes, Norton discovers that Gilbert is Lola Montez, the fabled "Spanish dancer" whose ill-fated romance with King Ludwig of Bavaria made her fodder for the gossip columns in the pre–Civil War era. When the two investigations intersect, Norton and Holmes find they must cooperate with each other. Emotion as well as logic figures in solving the dual mysteries of the cleric's murder and Norton's birth. Witty, fast-paced and meticulously researched, this sepia-tinted Victorian confection also reflects a contemporary sensibility as it ponders religious fanaticism and the challenges of a female celebrity living by her own rules. If indeed this is the last of the series, as the author has indicated, it closes on a definite high note.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Irene Adler, the opera singer turned detective, and her worthy adversary, Sherlock Holmes, are at it again. Readers left in suspense at the conclusion of Femme Fatale (2003) will be thrilled to learn that expatriate Irene remains in the U.S. to solve the perennial mystery of her parentage. Together with her faithful sidekick and chronicler Nell Huxleigh, she embarks on another adventure involving danger, intrigue, and murder. Crossing paths with the indefatigable Holmes hard at work on an interrelated investigation, they are swept up into a case that reaches far back into Irene's own murky past. As with the previous seven entries in this series, the cast of characters is stocked with an irresistible showcase of historic personages, including Nellie Bly, Willie Vanderbilt, Lola Montez, and King Ludwig of Bavaria. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (November 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765306832
• ISBN-13: 978-0765306838
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,593,911 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

With her home office a Twilight Zone landscape of mannequins in vintage dress, no wonder award-winning ex-journalist and novelist Carole Nelson Douglas's 55 novels range from historical and contemporary mystery and romance to science fiction thrillers to high and urban fantasy. They include two Las Vegas-set series: the Midnight Louie, feline PI, mysteries partially narrated by a "Sam Spade with hairballs" and the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator, noir urban fantasies of werewolf mobsters and Silver Screen zombies in a paranormal Vegas.

Douglas was the first author of a Sherlockian series with a female protagonist, diva-detective Irene Alder, the only woman to outwit Holmes, debuting with the New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Good Night, Mr. Holmes. Rachel McAdams plays Irene in the Dec. 25 film with Robert Downey, Jr. as Sherlock. Douglas says if she has a literary muse, it's definitely feline: mysterious, wise, playful, and packing sharp shivs in velvet gloves.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great story continues, December 12, 2004

By 

Richard Waters (Ramona, California United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spider Dance: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes (Irene Adler Mysteries) (Hardcover)

This story continues Irene Adler's adventures in gilded-age New York. As Irene seeks closure in the search for her mother, an unknown victim is found crucified on millionaire William K. Vanderbilt's billiard table. The action commences as Irene becomes convinced that the murder and her search are connected.
As with the previous stories in the series, I loved this book. All the usual suspects are present: her devoted friend and companion Nell Huxleigh, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, stunt reporter Nellie Bly, and dashing British spy Quentin Stanhope. Irene and the others become enmeshed in mystery and international intrigue stretching back decades to gold-rush California and revolution-torn Bavaria.
Within the story the author ponders religious and political obsession, relationships between mothers and daughters, and the price of independence and individuality in a world that demands conventionality and conformity.
This tale is the eighth in the Irene Adler series. To get the full Irene Adler experience, you could begin with "Goodnight, Mr. Holmes", the first book in the series.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rereadable Books Well Worth The Price, October 10, 2005

By 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg "sf/f writer" (Arizona) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spider Dance: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes (Irene Adler Mysteries) (Hardcover)

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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spider Dance Builds a Web of Intrigue in 19th C. New York, March 13, 2005

By 

F. Orion Pozo "Orion Pozo" (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spider Dance: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes (Irene Adler Mysteries) (Hardcover)

This is the latest entry in a series of novels based on the fictional character Irene Adler Norton from the Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal In Bohemia. This is also the second volume of a duology that began with Femme Fatale. In this latest volume Irene is in New York City of 1889 and seeking to uncover if her mother is the infamous Lola Montez. If that is not enough, she gets drawn into Holmes' case involving threats to the Vanderbilt family.

Carole Nelson Douglas has a delightful way of blending fictional and historic characters together with her own strong feminist point of view to re-envision the role of women in the nineteenth century. In this particular foray, we see the lives of Lola Montez, Alva and Consuelo Vanderbilt, and reporter Nellie Bly re-examined through the feminist perspective of Irene Adler and her partner in detective work, Nell Huxleigh.

Douglas has also developed a delightful multi-narrator style for revealing her story that mixes entries from various participants into a lively manner of plot evolution. This is offset with "quotes" from various historical sources that introduce each chapter. These two narrative devices are well executed in this particular story.

So take an exciting journey into late 19th century New York and explore the mysteries that Ms. Douglas unfolds. She has an excellent attention to detail and history that brings the subject to life.