Chapel Noir

New York: Forge, 2001. BH4 - A first edition (stated with complete numberline) hardcover book SIGNED by Carole Nelson Douglas with "Warmest wishes!" written on the title page in very good condtiion in very good dust jacket. Dust jacket and book have some bumped corners, light discoloration and shelf wear. Although not marked in any way, this copy comes from the personal collection of Otto Penzler, legendary editor and founder of the Mysterious Press, an award-winning icon in the genre. A Novel of Suspense Featuring Irene Adler, Sherlock Holmes, and Jack the Ripper. 8.5"x5.75", 494 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. IRENE ADLER RETURNS! 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 ever to have "outwitted" Sherlock Holmes. An operatic diva and intellectual equal (and some would say superior) to most of the men she encounters, Irene is a much at home with disguises and a revolver as with high society and haute couture. We at Forge are delighted to publish a new work 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 set against a richly researched and significant historical backdrop. This time, the story thrusts readers 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 that dare not speak its name. 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. Yet does anyone really seek the truth, or do they wish only to bury the dead women? For there is a worse horror that will draw Irene and her archival, 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.... Signed by Author. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.