Good Morning, Irene

by Carole Nelson Douglas

Book Overview

Picking up where Good Night, Mr. Holmes left off, our heroine, Irene, is in Paris lapping up her obituaries, when a drowned sailor emerges from the Seine bearing a strange tattoo . . . rather like the one on a corpse Irene once saw on Bram Stoker's dining room table. So that's what happened to Irene Adler Sherlockians will (relish) it --Charlotte MacLeod, author of The Mistletoe Mystery.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312932111
• ISBN13: 9780312932114
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 374 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.9" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Irene seeks out tattooed chests to solve a mystery

The Adventuress is the second in a series of mystery novels based on the career of Irene Adler Norton, a character from one of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. In Doyle's A Scandal In Bohemia Irene Adler outsmarts Holmes and wins his lasting admiration. Carol Nelson Douglas has taken this story as the basis for a series of delightful mystery novels that include Holmes and his companion Watson in mysteries that run parallel to the Holmes stories. She has also created a framework for this continued series based on a current day historian Fiona Witherspoon who has supposedly discovered the diaries of Irene's companion Penelope "Nell" Huxleigh and unpublished memoirs of Holmes and Dr. Watson that she blends into the novels of the series. This novel (which was originally published as Good Morning, Irene) takes an obscure reference in Doyle's story "The Sign of the Four" to Holmes going to France on a case involving a missing young woman as the basis for The Adventuress. Also worked into the plot is the 1889 marriage of Alice, Duchess of Richelieu to Prince Albert Grimaldi of Monaco. Anchored on these two points, Ms. Douglas spins a tale of lost treasure and a secret society of men marked with alphabetic tattoos who are drowning by jumping into rivers. The missing girl, Sarah Bernhardt, and Sherlock Holmes all help in solving the mystery of the drowning men and lost treasure. The story is told through Nell's journals and her prudish country parson's daughter point of view. She is great at describing the details of Irene's lovely wardrobe and meticulously preserving the incidents of the case. A great read in a delightful series of novels. No prior knowledge of Sherlock Holmes is needed to enjoy this book.

An actual review

I am not going to address the "reissue" debate. I'm actually going to tell you something about the book. Who would like this book? Anyone that loves Victoriana, 19th century history, mysteries, Sherlock Holmes (especially us Sherlockians, I have to say), and/or romance novels. Douglas' "Irene Adler series" has all of these elements and more. It is extremely well written. I consider myself to be extraordinarily literate and I still have to look up some of the terms in this series on occasion. I learn, but I am also entertained. I highly recommend this book as well as all of the Irene Adler series.

Fabulous Historical Adventure

I can't wait for the next book in the series, Chapel Noir, which is finally coming out. These books take Irene Adler, the only woman to outwit Sherlock Holmes, and make her the star of her own show. The historical research is top-notch, the writing is witty, and the stories are impossible to put down. This one features the first beautiful blonde American princess of Monaco (Grace was a late-comer!) in a plot that threatens a royal wedding and reveals an old and complex scheme to control a hidden fortune. It's an amusing and authentic spoof of Conan Doyle, yet captures the mood of the Victorian era even while referencing more modern events and interweaving details from the Holmes Canon. Historical and mystery fans, including serious Holmesians, will love this absorbing and delightful adventure.