REVIEWS FROM DEVORAH STONE
 in CANADA

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THE ALCHEMY OF MURDER         
CAROL McCLEARY         
Forge Books  March, 2010

Imagine being in Paris in 1889 for the World's Fair. Who would you like to be your guide? Jules Verne? Oscar Wilde? Louis Pasteur? Or all of them? What if you were the reporter and adventurer Nellie Bly? Sounds like a parlor game, but it's a rollicking, exciting, page-turning novel that works!

Nellie Bly is a ground-breaking female reporter and in this novel on the trail of a mass murdering, anarchist scientist. As an undercover investigative reporter, she witnesses a murder at a notorious insane asylum. She hunts the murderer to England and then Paris where she meets up with Jules Verne and Louis Pasteur.

Yes, there is a lot of name dropping but I didn't mind. The characters all worked. Nellie was amazingly plausible, just as I would imagine her to be in 'real life', a woman both of her times and yet very much ahead of them. Her personality, wit, cockeyed view of the world and dedication carries the narrative. This novel fulfilled many of my fantasies about the time and place. As soon as I opened up the book I was there walking down the streets of Paris in exalted and notorious company.

This is a fun book with intelligent, witty people as guides. It takes the reader to palaces, slums, exhibitions, bordellos, street cafes, sewers, studios, anarchist cells and scientific laboratories. I met the courteous serious Pasteur along with the witty fun-loving Irishman Oscar Wilde. Paris was a city of contrasts on the verge of yet another violent revolution; people desperate to topple the established order and, at the same time, a place of great culture and intellectuals. It was all there.

Not surprisingly Nellie does manage to get in a bit of romance with Jules Verne, while seeing the sites and finding out about microbes and contagious diseases from Pasteur. Still, unlike so many other female sleuths, she's more than capable of holding her own. I liked that the fictional Nellie was in so many ways like the real one. This novel is so convincing.

I can't wait for the next one where she goes around the world in less than 80 days!

                                                                                               - Devorah Stone

Devorah reviews
THE LEAVENWORTH CASE by Anna Katharine Green
in CLASSIC CORNER .