(Book 3, previously published without the Conan Doyle story as Irene at Large)
"Irene Adler, the dashing heroine of two earlier adventures in Carole Nelson Douglas's enchanting Victorian series [returns]...plot ingenuity remains fresh and amusing, and...the action never loses its jaunty, high-heeled pace."—The New York Times
When a savage-looking man in Oriental garb collapses at the feet of Miss Penelope Huxleigh, the spinster associate of diva/detective Irene Adler, at a Parisian sidewalk café, the perspicacious Adler quickly diagnoses his ailment as...poison. The recovering victim seeks to save the life of the man who tended his wounds at the disastrous battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan a decade earlier, one Dr. Watson.
Irene Adler herself will soon battle assassin cobras to uncover an international scheme of treachery, death and deceit leading back to London and 221B Baker Street, that rivals any adventure of Sherlock Holmes himself.
"The fast pace shifts from Afghanistan to Paris to London and finally to Sherlock Holmes himself...Irene is unconventional, irreverent, at least a century before her time—witty, competent, competitive, adventurous, and like Holmes himself fascinated with the curious and the criminal. The relationship between Irene and Penelope is both warm and charming. Irene's sharp and caustic wit is always softened by her obvious affection for her amanuensis."—Charles Burns, Worcester MA News