Femme Fatale (67 page)

Authors: Carole Nelson Douglas

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Traditional British, #Historical

BOOK: Femme Fatale

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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, yes. 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 second Adler novel,
The Adventuress
(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 considered it simply a novel.
Good Night, Mr. Holmes
was almost on the shelves 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.

About the Author

“Highly eclectic writer and literary adventuress, Douglas is as concerned about genre equality as she is about gender equity,” writes Jo Ellyn Clarey in
The Drood Review of Mystery
.

Carole Nelson Douglas is a journalist-turned-novelist whose writing in both fields has been a finalist for, or received, fifty 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 adventures 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 (along with groundbreaking mystery novelist, Marcia Muller) 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
Good Morning, Irene
will be released as
The Adventuress
in January 2004.