Femme Fatale **

** Femme Fatale, Carole Nelson Douglas, 2003

In the (to my knowledge) penultimate Irene Adler story, The Woman returns to her roots, America, drawn by a meddling Nellie Bly. People from her mostly forgotten childhood are dying by the cartloads and three people are on the case, working independently, Adler, Bly, and Holmes.

I loved the first few Irene books, but the further I go into the series, the lower the SNR (story to noise ratio) drops. By noise I mean things that don't move the story forward, such as discourses on fashion or religion or gender roles or women's rights or pages of banter between characters or back story relating what happened in previous books.

You expect some of this in the way of establishing character or sense of place or other of the little things authors do to keep a novel from turning into a screenplay. And to be sure, there is a certain amount of personal taste involved in determining the proper SNR, but I have a fairly liberal meter, as anyone who has read my novels knows.

But when you go twenty or more pages in a detective novel without anything of significance happening, the SNR is dangerously low.

So I've taken to skimming, which is practically against my religion. This saddens me because of how much I wanted to like the whole series as much as I liked the first few books. Oh well.

Castle Rouge ***

*** Castle Rouge, Carole Nelson Douglas, 2002


There are many tense moments in this conclusion to the story begun in Chapel Noir. And although Nell remains a bit too discursive for my taste, she is finally beginning to develop beyond the priggish prude that inhabits the earlier books. And I still find myself skimming over long sections of backstory rehearsing things we already know or "sermons" on various topics, such as gender role expectations and such.

In addition to the existing historical characters that populate previous books and this one, we add a nascent Rasputin.

Here's a nice quote: Through the fog and smoke the streets shone like a black cat's well-licked coat.

Chapel Noir ***

*** Chapel Noir, Carole Nelson Douglas, 2001

Chapel Noir is a departure from the pattern of the previous four. First, it's told from three different viewpoints. Second, it's a cliff-hanger, continued in Castle Rouge. Third, it's darker and more graphic, dealing as it does with Jack the Ripper.

It still has many of the elements that attracted me to the series:

• Extension to the Holmes canon.
• Stylistically consistent with the canon (excepting the some of the alternate viewpoint material).
• Cameo Holmes appearances, actually, fairly substantive appearances.
• Cameo appearances of historical characters (quite a few, and very cleverly done)

There continue to be, for me, some very skimmable passages of fashion, description, and back story. There are moments when Nell's obtuse naivete strains credulity and her moralizing personality begins to wear. Although, based on some dramatic developments at the end, I suspect that might be attenuated somewhat in the future. Or not.

Here is a descriptive passage I found to be particularly incisive, a description of a madame in a Paris bordello:

Her red hair was frizzled into a fright wig. Her decolletage overflowed a wasp-waisted bodice like two loaves of unbaked French bred. She had a sharp nose above a cheese-soft chin that faded into the high collar of fat cushioning her throat like a necklace of fleshy aspic. Her bead-bright eyes moved like roaches in the suet pudding of her face to study us.

Irene's Last Waltz ***

*** Irene's Last Waltz, Carole Nelson Douglas, 1994


Douglas does a great job of weaving canonical story lines into a new story, and this one is no exception. There are a lot of things happening on a lot of levels with several nice appearances of a certain personage.

One of those plot lines involves Charles Frederick Worth, the legendary designer. As a result, I resorted to a bit of skimming over the copious descriptions of fashion. YMMV.

This book was reissued as Another Scandal in Bohemia in 2003.

Irene At Large ***

*** Irene At Large, Carole Nelson Douglas, 1992

I like it when an extracononical story pulls in either contemporary references to historical figures or canonical characters.

In this installment of the Irene Adler saga, Douglas pulls in a character from the Holmes story "The Case of the Empty House" in which Holmes thwarts his own assassination by the second most dangerousm man in England, Colonel Sebastian Moran. She does an excellent job of integrating the story line with what will happen five years later in the Doyle story, even explaining why Watson acts as if he's never heard of Moran later.

One thing I'm not as much a fan of is the descriptions of fashion and extended banter. I expect female readers may have a different opinion, which is good since the majority of readers are female, but I find myself skimming sections that don't deal with the plot.

This book was reissued as A Soul of Steel in 2006.

Good Morning, Irene ***

*** Good Morning Irene, Carole Nelson Douglas, 1990


Two years ago I read Good Night, Mr. Holmes. I said I couldn't wait to read some more, but I did. Wait, that is. And now I've read some more and I'm glad I did.

As in the previous book, there is a brush with Sherlock Holmes, but it's not the focus of the story. Rather, the mystery of tattooed corpses missing a finger lead the trio (Irene, Godfrey, and chronicler Nell) from Paris to Monaco. Entertaining reading for Holmes fans and others.

Here are a few quotes:

"The longer I spoke the more convinced I became that I was hanging a sheep for a lamb."

I liked that one because of how she mangles the saying, "Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb." into hanging the animals.

"I will say this: that while in the relationships between men and women there is much stuff of comedy and tragedy, there can be found in the marital bed an intimacy that mingles the best of the human and the divine."

FYI, the book was reissued as The Adventuress in 2003.

Brain Rules ***

*** Brain Rules, John Medina, 2008

Stumbled across this book somewhere and used it as my workout read. It definitely passed the Elliptical Test. The book is divided into 12 rules, such as:

• 1. Exercise boosts brain power. (How appropriate!)
• 4. We don't pay attention to boring things.
• 8. Stressed brains don't learn the same way.

The research is fascinating and the writing is engaging. And it has many applications. It will change the way I write.

One common bit of writing advice is to engage all the senses. Don't just describe how it looks, but also how it sounds or smells or feels. The research bears out this advice. Tests show that when you read a word involving smell, the same part of your brain activates as when you actually smell it. So by writing to all the senses, you stimulate more of the brain, which makes it a richer experience and therefore more memorable.

And that's just one cool idea I got from the book.

The Wednesday Wars ***

*** The Wednesday Wars, Gary D. Schmidt, 2009

I'm not sure what got me to read this book. I've heard good things about it, but I'm not a regular reader of YA fiction. But somehow it ended up on my Kindle and I read it.

Excellent book for anyone, regardless of age. It's set roughly around the same time as Welcome to Fred. Here are a few quotes that stuck with me:

• I never thought being in seventh grade would mean so many death threats.
• It was what eighth graders whose career goal was the state penitentiary did.

The Non-Designers Design Book ****

**** The Non-Designers Design Book, Robin Williams, 2008

I can't possibly say enough good things about this book. As a visual novice taking on the task of designing book interiors and marketing collateral for Wunderfool Press, this book rightly assumes I know nothing and goes from there.

If you're not sure whether it's worth picking up, go to the preview on Amazon and scroll down to page 12. If that doesn't sell you, then the book is not for you. Williams doesn't have that much to say about book design, neither covers nor interiors, but the principles she sets down are universal and the concepts are easily applied to any visual project that relies on type.

Here are a few of the basic rules of thumb Williams advocates:

• Don't be a wimp.
• Don't use 12-point type.
• Don't use Times, Arial, Helvetica, or Sands.
• Don't be a wimp.

I jest. But only a little. Each page of the book is a beautiful visual, and the content is simple and foundational. If you are a novice and have to do any layout at all, get this book!

A Geography of Time ***

*** A Geography of Time, Robert Levine, 1997

This nifty little book has a wealth of insights into the pace and quality of life as it pertains to the time-related aspects of our worldview. It's filled with empirical research and personal anecdotes from the author. There are quite a few surprises and a section on suggestions of how to incorporate aspects of other cultures to create a more balanced approach to life when it comes to the use and misuse of time. It's worth a read.