Dear Friends,

        I love a mystery . . . especially when it involves real people who rose above ordinary lives to “make history.”

        Nellie Bly, investigative reporter extraordinaire, had the plucky courage and raw daring that epitomized the Victorian era.   When a New York newspaper editor refused her a job, and said that a woman was not capable of being a “detective reporter,” Nellie got herself committed to the notorious women’s insane asylum on Blackwell's Island and did a story that set the city on its head.      

        When I discovered that Nellie Bly was in Paris in the fall of 1889, I was intrigued because Paris was the Grand Dame of all cites in the Victorian Era-the City of Light was the center of fashion, the arts, and love affairs.
        It turns out that Jules Verne, the “inventor” of science fiction, whose stories and the movies made from them still fascinate us, was also in Paris that fall – and had met Nellie.  So was Oscar Wilde, the poet and author scandalizing café society with his sex life and witticisms . . .  while the “great microbe hunter,” Louis Pasteur, had moved into the imposing institute that the grateful people of France had provided.    

        The Victorian Era itself was a wonderful “character” - an exciting era of brave hearts and warm souls, of great art and inquiring minds, of duels for honor and affairs of the heart; a time when men and women were experimenting with love while “scientific” journals warned that masturbation caused blindness and insanity . . .

       Entities from the dark side of life were also in the city - terrorists called “anarchists” conducted a reign of terror while a deadly microbe swept in from the Russian steppes, causing a deadly pandemic.

        Oh . . . did I mention that Jack the Ripper killings in London of the previous year were being investigated?

        All the wonderful historical characters and events played in my head . . . it sounds like a lot, but when I thought about it, all the pieces fit together and started ticking like a fine Swiss watch . . . or would ticking like an anarchist bomb be a better analogy?

        You can decide, and please, let me know, after you read the book.

                                                      Carol