Castle Rouge
Page 49
Carole Nelson Douglas is a journalist-turned-novelist whose writing in both fields has received dozens of awards. A literary chameleon, she has always explored the roles of women in society, first in daily newspaper reporting, then in numerous novels ranging from fantasy and science fiction to mainstream fiction.
She currently writes two mystery series. The Victorian Irene Adler series examines the role of women in the late nineteenth century through the eyes of the only woman to outwit Sherlock Holmes, an American diva/detective. The contemporary-yet-Runyonesque Midnight Louie series contrasts the realistic crime-solving activities and personal issues of four main human characters with the interjected first-person feline viewpoint of a black alley cat PI, who satirizes the role of the rogue male in crime and popular fiction. (“Although Douglas has a wicked sense of humor,” Clarey writes, “her energetic sense of justice is well-balanced and her fictional mockery is never nasty.”)
Douglas, born in Everett, Washington, grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and emigrated with her husband to Fort Worth, Texas, trading Snowbelt for Sunbelt and journalism for fiction. At the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul she earned degrees in English literature and speech and theater, with a minor in philosophy, and was a finalist in Vogue magazine’s Prix de Paris writing competition (won earlier by Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis).
Chapel Noir resumed the enormously well-received Irene Adler series after a seven-year hiatus and with its sequel, Castle Rouge, comprises the Jack the Ripper duology within the overall series. The first Adler novel, Good Night, Mr. Holmes, won American Mystery and Romantic Times magazine awards and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The reissued edition of Irene’s Last Waltz will be released as Another Scandal in Bohemia in January, 2003.
E-mail: ireneadler@catwriter.com
Web site: www.catwriter.com
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
CASTLE ROUGE: AN IRENE ADLER NOVEL
Copyright © 2002 by Carole Nelson Douglas
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Claire Eddy
Maps by Darla Tagrin
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Douglas, Carole Nelson.
Castle Rouge: an Irene Adler novel / Carole Nelson Douglas.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN: 978-0-312-86941-0
1. Adler, Irene (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Holmes, Sherlock (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Women detectives—France—Paris—Fiction. 4. Transylvania (Romania)—Fiction. 5. Jack, the Ripper—Fiction. 6. London (England)—Fiction. 7. Paris (France)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3554.O8237 C215 2002
813’.54—dc21
2002026057
*These are the revised editions
*These are the revised editions
*These are the revised editions
**Also mystery
**Also mystery
**Also mystery
**Also mystery
*Advocates of Irene Adler
*Advocates of Irene Adler