Chapel Noir
Page 49
Q: How did Doyle feel toward the character of Irene Adler?
A: I believe that Holmes and Watson expressed two sides of Dr. Doyle: Watson the medical and scientific man, also the staunch upholder of British convention; Holmes the creative and bohemian writer, fascinated by the criminal and the bizarre. Doyle wrote classic stories of horror and science fiction as well as hefty historical novels set in the age of chivalry. His mixed feelings of attraction and fear toward a liberated, artistic woman like Irene Adler led him to “kill” her as soon as he created her. Watson states she is dead at the beginning of the story that introduces her. Irene was literally too hot for Doyle as well as Holmes to handle. She also debuted (and exited) in the first Holmes/Watson story Doyle ever wrote. Perhaps Doyle wanted to establish an unattainable woman to excuse Holmes remaining a bachelor and aloof from matters of the heart. What he did was to create a fascinatingly unrealized character for generations of readers.
Q: Do your protagonists represent a split personality as well?
A: Yes, one even more sociologically interesting than the Holmes/Watson split because it embodies the evolving roles of women in the late nineteenth century. As a larger-than-life heroine, Irene is “up to anything.” Her biographer, Penelope “Nell” Huxleigh, however, is the very model of traditional Victorian womanhood. Together they provide a seriocomic point-counterpoint on women’s restricted roles then and now. Narrator Nell is the character who “grows” most during the series as the unconventional Irene forces her to see herself and her times in a broader perspective. This is something women writers have been doing in the past two decades: revisiting classic literary terrains and bringing the sketchy women characters into full-bodied prominence.
Q: What of “the husband,” Godfrey Norton?
A: In my novels, Irene’s husband, Godfrey Norton, is more than the “tall, dark, and dashing barrister” Doyle gave her. I made him the son of a woman wronged by England’s then female-punitive divorce law, so he is a “supporting” character in every sense of the word. These novels are that rare bird in literature: female “buddy” books. Godfrey fulfills the useful, decorative, and faithful role so often played by women and wives in fiction and real life. Sherlockians anxious to unite Adler and Holmes have tried to oust Godfrey. William S. Baring-Gould even depicted him as a wife-beater in order to promote a later assignation with Holmes that produced Nero Wolfe! That is such an unbelievable violation of a strong female character’s psychology. That scenario would make Irene Adler a two-time loser in her choice of men and a masochist to boot. My protagonist is a world away from that notion and a wonderful vehicle for subtle but sharp feminist comment.
Q: Did you give her any attributes not found in the Doyle story?
A: I gave her one of Holmes’s bad habits. She smokes “little cigars.” Smoking was an act of rebellion for women then. And because Doyle shows her sometimes donning male dress to go unhampered into public places, I gave her “a wicked little revolver” to carry. When Doyle put her in male disguise at the end of his story, I doubt he was thinking of the modern psychosexual ramifications of cross-dressing.
Q: Essentially, you have changed Irene Adler from an ornamental woman to a working woman.
A: My Irene is more a rival than a romantic interest for Holmes. She is not a logical detective in the same mold as he, but is as gifted in her intuitive way. Nor is her opera singing a convenient profession for a beauty of the day, but a passionate vocation that was taken from her by the King of Bohemia’s autocratic attitude toward women, forcing her to occupy herself with detection. Although Doyle’s Irene is beautiful, well-dressed, and clever, my Irene demands that she be taken seriously despite these feminine attributes. Now we call it “Grrrrl Power.”
I like to write “against” conventions that are no longer true, or were never true. This is the thread that runs through all my fiction: my dissatisfaction with the portrayal of women in literary and popular fiction—then and even now. This begins with Amberleigh—my postfeminist mainstream version of the Gothic revival popular novels of the 1960s and 1970s—and continues with Irene Adler today. I’m interested in women as survivors. Men also interest me of necessity, men strong enough to escape cultural blinders to become equal partners to strong women.
Q: How do you research these books?
A: From a lifetime of reading English literature and a theatrical background that educated me on the clothing, culture, customs, and speech of various historical periods. I was reading Oscar Wilde plays when I was eight years old. My mother’s book club meant that I cut my teeth on Eliot, Balzac, Kipling, Poe, poetry, Greek mythology, Hawthorne, the Brontes, Dumas, and Dickens.
In doing research, I have a fortunate facility of using every nugget I find, or of finding that every little fascinating nugget works itself into the story. Perhaps that’s because good journalists must be ingenious in using every fact available to make a story as complete and accurate as possible under deadline conditions. Often the smallest mustard seed of research swells into an entire tree of plot. The corpse on the dining-room table of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, was too macabre to resist and spurred the entire plot of the third Adler novel, A Soul of Steel (formerly Good Morning, Irene). Stoker rescued a drowning man from the Thames and carried him home for revival efforts, but it was too late.
Besides using my own extensive library on this period, I’ve borrowed from my local library all sorts of arcane books they don’t even know they have because no one ever checks them out. The Internet aids greatly with the specific fact. I’ve also visited London and Paris to research the books, a great hardship, but worth it. I also must visit Las Vegas periodically for my contemporary-set Midnight Louie mystery series. No sacrifice is too great.
Q: You’ve written fantasy and science fiction novels, why did you turn to mystery?
A: All novels are fantasy and all novels are mystery in the largest sense. Although mystery was often an element in my early novels, when I evolved the Irene Adler idea, I just considered it a novel. Good Night, Mr. Holmes was almost published before I realized it would be “categorized” as a mystery. So Irene is utterly a product of my mind and times, not of the marketplace, though I always believed that the concept was timely and necessary.
Selected Bibliography
Bassermann, Lujo. The Oldest Profession: A History of Prostitution. USA: Dorset Press, 1993.
Belford, Barbara. Bram Stoker. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Brook-Shepherd, Gordon. Uncle of Europe: The Social and Diplomatic Life of Edward VII. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975.
Coleman, Elizabeth Ann. The Opulent Era. New York, NY: The Brooklyn Museum, 1989.
Harsin, Jill. Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Hibbert, Christopher. The Royal Victorians. New York, NY: Lippincott, 1976.
Hovey, Tamara. Paris Underground. New York, NY: Orchard Books/Scholastic, Inc., 1991.
Jakubowski, Maxim and Braund, Nathan. The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper. London: Constable & Robinson Ltd., 1999.
Knowles, Thomas W. and Lansdale, Joe. The West That Was. New York, NY: Wings Books, 1993.
Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. Psychopathia Sexualis. Various editions.
Lottman, Herbert R. The French Rothschilds. New York, NY: Crown, 1995.
National Gallery of Australia. Paris in the Late 19th Century. Publications Department, National Gallery of Australia: Canberra, Australia, 1996.
Newman, Bruce M. Fantasy Furniture. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1989.
Pearson, John. Edward the Rake. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, Joyanovich, 1975.
Russell, John. Paris. New York, NY: Abradale Press/Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1983.
Schwartz, Vanessa R. Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1999.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Various editions.
Wetmore, Helen Cod
y. Last of the Great Scouts. Harrisburg, PA: The National Historical Society, 1899/1994.
About the Author
CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS is 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 nonfiction reporting and 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-Runyon-esque 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, P. I., who satirizes the role of the rogue male in crime and popular fiction.
Douglas, born in Everett, Washington, grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, but emigrated with her husband to Fort Worth, Texas, trading Snowbelt for Sunbelt and journalism for fiction. In college she was a finalist in Vogue magazine’s Prix de Paris writing competition (won earlier by Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis) and earned degrees in English literature and speech and theater, with a minor in philosophy. She collects books, vintage clothing, and homeless animals.
Chapel Noir resumes the enormously well-received Irene Adler series after a seven-year hiatus and will be followed by a sequel, Castle Rouge. The first Adler novel, Good Night, Mr. Holmes, won American Mystery and Romantic Times magazine awards and was a New York Times Notable Book.
Website: www.catwriter.com
E-mail: IreneAdler@catwriter.com
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Halftitle
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Contents
Editor’s Note
Cast of Continuing Characters
Prelude
1. Somewhere in Paris
2. Somewhere in France
3. Nell and the Night Visitors
4. Not So Sweet a Home . . .
5.The Abbot Noir
6. Frère Jacques, Dormez-Vous?
7. Woman of Mystery
8. Call Her Madam
9. Horrible Imaginings
10. Carried Away
11. Rue Royale
12. Family Resemblance
13. Rogue Royale
14. Gypsy Fortune
15. In the Pink
16. Jacques the Ripper
17. La Tour Awful
18. An Unappetizing Menu
19. A Movable Feast
20. Wild Oats
21. The Women of Whitechapel
22. The Judgment of Paris
23. Deadlier than the Male
24. Morgue Le Fey
25. Dancing with the Dead
26. La Mort Double
27. The Skull Beneath the Skin
28. A Werewolf in London
29. Lost Soul
30. Jack L’Eventreur
31. Sins of the Son
32. Sherlock the Shredder
33. With Bated Breath
34. Buffalo Gals
35. Of Couches and Corks
36. Couched in Ambiguity
37. We Three Queens
38. A Message from Abroad
39. Last Tangle in Paris
40. A Map of Murder
41. The French Connection
42. Tableaux Mordants
43. Calendar of Crime
44. A Confederacy of Paper
45. Worlds Fair and Foul
46. An Exhibition in Terror
47. Paranoia
48. No Quarter
49. Lost Innocence
50. Resolution
Coda: The Vampire Box
Afterword
A Readers Guide
For Discussion
An Interview with Carole Nelson Douglas
Selected Bibliography
About the Author