A Baker Street Irregular

A black cat is rescued from ruffians and brought to Sherlock Holmes.  Sarah Bernhardt comes to Holmes regarding missing jewels and takes the cat home with her naming him Midnight.  The cat does some investigating and leaves a clue for Holmes, who then solves the case.  Midnight then leaves Bernhardt and hits the street</p>s where Irene Adler and Penelope Huxleigh find him and take him home, naming him Midnight Louie.

  For more info about the book, Midnight Louie's Pet Detectives, see the Other Books page.

Dracula on the Rocks

A series of 6 letters dated from March 3 through May 4, 1886, written by Irene to Nell in London from Warsaw. Irene is singing at the Imperial Opera where Marylka, a maid, befriends her.  Marylka warns her about a vampire, and gives her a silver cross blessed by the Pope, and strings of garlic cloves and warnings of vampires.   They are practicing the opera Boris Godunov, in which Irene is playing Marina. Lucinda, a blonde English ingenue, and Henri, the tenor behind the scenes are in love.  Horst is the baritone, an Austrian, lean and 60ish.  Wilhelm von Ormstein, the crown prince of Bohemia, is courting Irene.  Bram Stoker visits Irene, hoping to get material for a book.  Lilla and Violetta, two singers disappear.  Count Dracula seems to be taking Lucinda away from Henri, who comes to Irene for help.  Irene, who doesn't believe in vampires, gives Lucinda the cross and garlic and tells her the Count is a vampire, thus scaring her away from him.  The Count comes to Irene instead.  Irene shoots him, with no results, and the Count puts a trance on Irene so she is helpless when he goes for her neck.  Too bad for the Count.  Afterward, Irene is musing about her next role as Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus (the Bat).

Mesmerizing Bertie

Bertie is an "affectionate" nickname for Edward VII, whom Irene met when he was still Prince of Wales.  At at time when the telephone was almost unknown, 1882, Bertie was on the phone listening to Christine who was in the wings of a Gilbert and Sullivan rehearsal when she was murdered.

Irene was in the cast at the time and realizes Christine was hit on the head with a heavy bar.  She rushes to the other end of the phone line and uses hypnotism on Bertie to help him remember what he heard and discover the murderer . We never find out the murderer's name as Irene reminisces after the turn of the century (probably around 1905) to Nell, but then there is more mystery to Irene than to the murder.  Who else has she hypnotized and what else has she done besides discover a murderer?

Parris Green

Takes place in London in 1886, Irene Adler along with Penelope Huxleigh and Oscar Wilde go to investigate a mad painter, Lysander Parris, who is locked in his studio and busy painting a dead woman, Phoebe Miller, the maid.  Irene interviews Amelia Parris, his wife who sells hat boxes to make ends meet, Lawrence, his son, and Mrs. McCorkle, the housekeeper.  Parris is a master at painting with greens, hence Parris green.  Paris green is also a chemical used to keep blues in wallpaper from bleeding. 

Victims: Phoebe Miller and a kitten.

Thief of Twelfth Night

The story is told in 1903 of an event in 1883.  A gem in missing, the Epiphany Emerald.  There are twelve people sharing a dinner on twelfth night at the Oliver's house, including Holmes and Watson.  One of them took the gem.  Was it Grandmother Oliver, a kleptomaniac, or either Mr. or Mrs. Barnaby Oliver, or Antonia, the 8 year old daughter, Andrew, the 20 year old son with gambling debts, Sebastian the eldest son, Olivia  the elder daughter or her husband Valentine Feste, or the music hall creature on the arm of Sebastian, Viola DeVere, or her unknown friend?  Surely it couldn't be Watson or Sherlock Holmes who rounded out the twelve.  It wasn't Maria the maid or Fabian the butler, nor was it the ginger cat or Curio the monkey.