Spider Dance (77 page)

“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 moved 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. Two more Adler novels, the New York City–set
Femme Fatale
and
Spider Dance
, have followed. 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 at Large
will appear as A
Soul of Steel
in January 2005.

e-mail:cdouglascatwriter.com
Web sites:
www.carolenelsondouglas.com