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The Alchemy of Murder
 
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The Alchemy of Murder (Hardcover)

by Carol McCleary (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £19.99
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 576 pages
  • Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton; First Edition edition (2 April 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0340978392
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340978399
  • Product Dimensions: 23.8 x 15.8 x 5.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 645,876 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Review

'Packed with historical detail and humour' (Elle )

'Meet Nellie Bly, America's first female investigative reporter. She's feisty, funny, opinionated, persistent, and as tough as any male she meets. She has to be, because in The Alchemy of Murder, she's swept through a tale of peril and pursuit that is sure to keep you turning pages long after you should have been asleep. You'll find yourself on the mean streets of nineteenth century New York, in Victorian London and in Paris as the Eiffel Tower rises and deadly things – men and microbes – stalk the streets. It is a dazzling entertainment, so well constructed – and it has Oscar Wilde too!' (William Martin )

'Carol McCleary does for the City of Light what Ann Perry has done for Victorian London and what The Alienist did for 19th century New York. A gripping, atmospheric, electrifying masterwork!' (Barbara Wood )

'Meet Nelly Bly, investigative reporter, self-assured, gutsy and funny, in her first outing. THE ALCHEMY OF MURDER is a brilliant debut full of historical detail and peril which will entertain you right till the last page. Can't wait to read more of her adventures' (David Headley )


Product Description

PARIS 1889. THE WORLD’S FAIR

The Alchemist is how I’ve come to think of him; he has a passion for the dark side of knowledge, mixing murder and madness with science

Nellie Bly – reporter, feminist and amateur detective – is in Paris on the trail of an enigmatic killer.

The city is a dangerous place: an epidemic of Black Fever rages, anarchists plot to overthrow the government and a murderer preys on the prostitutes who haunt the streets of Montmartre. But it is also a city of culture, a magnet for artists and men of science and letters. Can the combined genius of Oscar Wilde, Jules Verne and Louis Pasteur help Nellie prove a match for Jack the Ripper?

‘Dazzling’ William Martin

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
2.0 out of 5 stars This Got Rather Silly, 2 Oct 2009
By Mr. Peter Steward "petersteward" (Norwich, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
When I started reading this book I thought I had hit upon an absolute gem - but I was wrong. At first I thought that McCleary's heroin Nellie Bly was a character from her own pen. But then I found that Nellie actually existed and the majority of the first 80 pages are a description in novel form of this investigative journalist's life, fighting for equality and the rights of women. It is an excellent insight into the times and the way she forces her way into newspapers as a campaigning journalist, even going to the lengths of getting herself committed to an infamous American lunatic asylum to write a piece on the treatment of women there. So far so good.

Then the book sadly goes off the rails. We skip over the interesting parts of Nellie's career, tossing aside how she made it out of the asylum and we embark on a silly murder hunt that is quite obviously fictional and takes her to Paris of the late 19th century on the trail of a man who slashes and kills women.
The book does give an evocative feel of Paris in the grip of anarchists, Black Fever and squalid living conditions. But the book has a major flaw and I have the same kind of problem with it as I had with Jed Rubenfeld's The Interpretation of Murder. Both weave a fictitious plot around real famous people. In the case of this book we have Nellie Bly, Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde, Toulouse Lautrec and Louis Pasteur who all come together in some kind of literary/medical murder solving club. It's plainly quite silly.

There is also a limit to the number of times you can enjoy a joke of the "it'll never catch on" when talking about ideas of items that are now taken for granted in the modern world. Things like who wants to have noisy, smelly machinery when there are horses. That kind of thing is littered throughout the book.

The plot seems to be all over the place and when the criminal is unmasked there are no real surprises. If McCleary had stuck with the actual life of Nellie Bly with a fictional account based on the facts of how she campaigned on behalf of women it would have been a riveting read instead of a second rate murder story. There was a good novel inside this effort, but this wasn't it.
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4.0 out of 5 stars "I've never feared any man as much as I fear the man in black.", 21 Sep 2009
"I've never feared any man as much as I fear the man in black. His is an evil that seeks blood in the darkest places of gaslit streets and forgotten alleys. The Alchemist if how I've come to think of him..."

The opening paragraph speaks well for the book that is to follow. It is historical, it is at the same time clearly modern, and yet it works.

The speaker of those words is Nellie Bly and she is in Paris as an investigative reporter during the World's Fair in 1889.

Nellie, we learn, has had a difficult life but she has learned to stand on her own two feet and build a life for herself and her mother. A combination of luck and her own inherent curiosity led her to become a reporter and she has established herself by taking risks and by exploiting the fact that she can goes to places and see things that men cannot.

Along the way Nellie encountered the man she believes to be "The Alchemist", and it is to track him down that she has come to Paris.

Her investigation is set against not only the World's Fair but also an epidemic of Black Fever and anarchists plotting to overthrow the government.

Jules Verne and Oscar Wilde became involved in the investigation; Louis Pasteur has a signigicant role to pay; and Toulouse Lautrec and Paul Verlaine put in appearances too.

It sounds ludicrous, and yet Carol McCleary makes it work.

Nellie is a charming heroine, and although she rather too modern, she is a woman you can warm to and such a positive figure than you can easily forgive her for that.

The mystery is well constructed and all of the characters and themes that the author has at her disposal are well used. It is simply and clearly written, making it very easy to fly through the pages.

The story has clearly been well researched, and the line that lies between informing and preaching has been walked well. There were moments when I couldn't believe the story, but I could never disprove it!

And I didn't really want to disprove it - the Alchemy of Murder was a wonderfully entertaining journey.

The conclusion lays a clear path for a sequel, and I could easily see this being the start of a very successful series.
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